Front Burner - As assault looms, Palestinians are trapped in Rafah

Episode Date: February 14, 2024

Rafah, a tiny city at Gaza’s border with Egypt, is currently sheltering more than half of the territory’s population. Many, crammed together in tent cities, have already relocated multiple times, as Israel’s war with Hamas has pushed them further and further south. Now, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledges to move ahead with a major assault on Rafah, the civilians sheltering in the city say there’s nowhere else to go. Today our guest is Haaretz reporter Yarden Michaeli. He and his colleague Avi Scharf recently investigated the vast devastation that the Israel Defense Forces’ operations have left in Gaza. He talks to us about the path of destruction that kettled 1.4 million people into Rafah, and what it could mean if a full-scale invasion goes ahead. For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Damon Fairless. Last Sunday night, when many North Americans were glued to the Super Bowl, Israel launched attacks on Rafah, a small city at the southern edge of the Gaza Strip. During the strikes, Israeli special forces freed two hostages who were kidnapped during Hamas's October 7th attacks,

which killed about 1,200 people. who were kidnapped during Hamas's October 7th attacks, which killed about 1,200 people. According to health officials in Gaza, Sunday's strikes killed at least 74 Palestinians, including children. Rafah is tiny. It's only about 64 square kilometers.

But more than half of Gaza's citizens, 1.4 million people, are crammed into it. And now, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledges to move ahead with a major assault on Rafah, the civilians sheltering in the city say there's nowhere left to go. Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced in Gaza. Tents now cover a wide area, leading to Rafah being dubbed a tent city. We have children and women with us. Where should we go? We're sleeping in a nylon tent. We'll die instantly if a missile hits us.

Yarden Mihaili is a reporter with Haaretz. He's based in Tel Aviv, and we're going to talk about the path of destruction that's kettled people into this tiny city and what it could mean if a full-scale assault goes ahead. Hey, Yarden, thanks so much for coming on Frontburner. I really appreciate it. You're welcome. I'm happy to be here.

Okay, so today we're going to track the flow of the majority of Gaza's population as it's been pushed further and further south down the strip. And I want to start in October when Israel first launched its major bombing campaign in response to Hamas's attack inside Israel on October 7th. One of the first things the IDF did was to order the evacuation of a million Gazans from the northern half of the strip in preparation for a ground invasion. Israel has ordered more than a million people in northern Gaza to evacuate the region in less than 24 hours. The United Nations says that is impossible without devastating humanitarian consequences. And I suspect a lot of our listeners are going to remember the footage of this, but I was hoping you could take us back. What did the initial wave of evacuations from the north look like? Can you take me back through that time?

It was pretty massive, in one word. Well, immediately after the Hamas attack on southern Israel, the IDF started heavily shedding the strip from the air, land and sea. Well, Israel has deployed tanks on Gaza's boundaries. In a statement released after a sixth night of airstrikes, the Israeli Defense Forces accused Hamas of using civilians as human shields. The IDF dropped leaflets telling people to move south. We saw them dropping from the sky,

and they were noting that anyone that would stay behind would be in danger. The camouflage of the terrorists is the civil population. Therefore, we need to separate them. So those who want to save their life, please go south. We are going to destroy Hamas infrastructures. And basically, immediately people took off. And we saw those massive waves of people just carrying whatever they could with their own hands like with their bare hands if they had cars then with cars but some people on foot families

everybody basically and they started many people started moving south the line stretches back kilometers back as far as the eye can see told by by the Israelis to leave northern Gaza, they grabbed what they could, the gathered remnants of lives abandoned, walking past the shells of homes, of communities, of places they know but no longer recognize. The IDF was focusing its shelling in the north at the time, but it was shelling basically the whole strip. So a lot of testimonies that we got noted that people were escaping while

being bombarded. People noted that the roads weren't safe. They had to go through roads that had craters in them. So it wasn't an easy escape route for them. It is a difficult situation. This is my son. He's 50 days old. My wife and children are with me. We're exhausted. We've walked a long distance and we still do not know how much further we have to walk. Where can we go? This is a new wave of displacement. It's like 1948. There are thousands of homeless people, including children and women, and people of all ages. Some have perished on the streets, while others lie on the ground helpless.

Where can we go? And this is, you know, again, at the beginning of Israel's campaign, aerial campaign on Gaza. Now, since then, you and your colleagues have done really, it's actually just stunning visual

journalism, this amazing investigation. You've used satellite imagery and satellite data, and you've tracked the progression of the destruction as the wars advanced. And I want to talk about that. I want to start with Gaza City in the north. Can you take me back? What was it like before the war, Gaza City? Well, Gaza City was the heart of the strip. It had most of the healthcare system, for example.

It had many UN support facilities. It had all kinds of shelters and schools. The infrastructure that civilians need in order to maintain their lives. Now, in the images and the data that we found and that we published, they show massive destruction in those areas. Gaza City took the biggest amount of damage. They say that about 72% of buildings were likely damaged to some degree or affected by collateral damage or destroyed. Now, this data doesn't tell us what happened with the specific buildings, so concerning all the buildings that I noted before, but this is why we looked at those high-res satellite

images by a private company, Planet Labs, and we could see the destruction with our own very eyes. and we could see the destruction with our own very eyes. It's probably worth pointing out that the population of Gaza City before the onset of the war was roughly 750,000 people, right? And as you point out, the before and after images in your piece are really startling. So I was struck by when you had these images of Palestine Square. Can you tell me about it, the the extent of the devastation was there? Yeah, that's really massive.

I think it's hard to describe, but basically Palestine Square, the before is you can see a square. It's a pretty big one. And you can see the buildings surrounding it. In the after image that we have, most the buildings that are in the direct vicinity of the square they're completely level like it's and we're talking about massive buildings and they're just completely gone and then there's damage surrounding um there's more damage surrounding the square um even further away from it we could could see huge craters around it. So basically places where people could congregate.

Palestine Square is the main place in Gaza City. We can see that they were completely destroyed. So, you know, we've been talking about people moving out of the northern part of the Gaza Strip as IDF came in and started their bombing campaign. A lot of the people fled from the north towards the south. And a lot of people ended up in Khan Yunus, which is, you know, fairly far south. It's in the zone at the time that the Israeli government had told civilians would be safe. And actually on the show, we've talked to, we had a couple interviews with people there. The first was early on, and that was with a professor who had moved from the north to Khan Yunus. He was staying at an apartment of friends or family. And actually, he was talking to us from the balcony of that apartment building, watching a couple of IDF fighter jets fly overhead. And this was really before the bombing campaign started in Khan Yunus. And then more recently, last month, we spoke with a Canadian doctor who did a two-week mission in a couple of hospitals in Khan Yunus. And by the time he got there, there was a whole lot more destruction. I guess I was wondering if you

could take me into what your investigation revealed about the extent of the destruction in Khan Yunis. So this is, when it comes to Khan Yunis, the situation was moving so fast. It took us a while to work on this investigation because there are a lot of details, information, et cetera, et cetera. So at the first set of images that we had we saw a certain amount of destruction and as we were working on it we could actually see the path through which the army was moving in or like where the fighting was taking place because we could see in newer images more

destruction it was really visible now if you think about it from the point of view of the displaced Palestinians, that means that many of them that were displaced once or twice, already moving southwards at the beginning of the war, now they found themselves in a situation where they had to escape again. Thousands of Palestinians crowd tent cities after fleeing their homes in the north. Now, they fear they'll have to leave again. Early today, the IDF dropped leaflets over the southern city of Khan Yunis, warning residents to get out.

But many, like the Abu Jabal family, don't know where to go. They asked us, the citizens of Gaza, to go to the south. We went to the south. Now they're asking us to leave. Where do we go? There were even images that we didn't include in the story just because we got them too late to include them in it. But we saw a huge amount of tents,

a large number of tents close to a UN structure where people, a lot of Palestinians, they built their tents close to those kind of schools and UN structures because they thought they're going to be safe. And in one photo, we see all those tents. And then the week after, they're all gone. And that really corresponded to the reports and the videos and other imagery that we're getting from other sources, seeing people fleeing further down to the south as the fighting was increasing in Khan Younes. Many Palestinians are being forced from their homes yet again.

Practically the entire population of Gaza is being pushed into one small city on the border with Egypt. Every day I see children die, says Ahmed. We only just managed to get away from the shelling. Many of my friends were killed. So you're reporting, and some other reporting from a number of outlets, including the New York Times, found that IDF has waged significant attacks in areas it told Gazan civilians to flee to, including Khan Yunus. What has the IDF said about

why they've done that? It's important to understand that the IDF is facing a huge challenge. They're fighting a terror organization heavily embedded between civilians, thousands and thousands of Hamas terrorists across the Strip, which is very small to begin with.

So when I asked the IDF for their comment about the investigation and this massive, really massive amount of destruction, what they told me is that in some areas, whole buildings or neighborhoods, civilian infrastructure, they really noted mosques and churches, etc., have been turned into combat zones and needed to be destroyed. Hamas is also using underground tunnels in which some of the hostages might be held. might be held. And the IDF says that it needs to use a lot of firepower in order to destroy those underground tunnels in order to fight Hamas.

Now, the IDF can argue, people can argue about whether that's the right way to go about it or not, but that's the challenge that they're facing. And they say that they're making an effort to minimize the damage to the civilian population. They said that they're committed to international law and they obey it. Now, the gap between that and what is happening on the ground is significant. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection.

Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo, 50%. That's because

money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Cops. So people have continued to move south, and I'm going to bring up Rafa shortly, but I wanted to, before we do that, I want to zoom out for a moment, because your investigation shows just how vast the destruction throughout the entire Gaza Strip is. So I was just wondering, in concrete terms, do we have a number, do we have a percentage you can put on the extent of the damage or destroyed buildings?

The UN quotes a number by like the, one of the UN bodies called OCHA. They quote a number from the Palestinians, which says that 60% of housing units were damaged or destroyed. The number that we got from the researchers that we worked with says that 50% of buildings have been either damaged or destroyed. It's very hard to verify those numbers.

I think I trust the data from the satellite. One reason why it's so hard to assess the damage, and this is also why we're so interested in publishing this story, is that the IDF doesn't allow journalists to go freely into the street. So we can't see it with our own very eyes. And this is also a caveat that all the researchers and experts that we spoke with, they noted that eventually like the real number, we get it only at the end of the war when people will be able to look at things on the ground and compare building by building

to how it was before the war. But we're talking about like damage destroyed or like damage and destruction to buildings and across the street. So when we started working on this story, we really thought this is what we're reporting on. And that was what we were thinking about. But then the penny dropped in the sense of it's not about the buildings,

it's about the people. It means that this massive amount of people that we just talked about that were displaced, that moved southwards, those people won't have anywhere to return to. Those people basically lost everything. We escaped the north with empty hands. Then we escaped Khan Yunus with almost empty hands. We don't want to repeat that. We want to be ready this time.

I think it's probably worth mentioning too that, mentioning, too, that we've got, you know, something like 28,000 Palestinians who have been killed. The Gaza health officials say 70% are women and children. And also, you know, 232 Israeli soldiers have died. You know, that's the current count. you know, tiny strip, Rafa, there's an estimated 1.4 million people sheltering there now. So can you give me a sense of how the population has exploded in Rafa since the beginning of the war? Yeah, that's really incredible. It's hard to grasp. It moved from a place where there were remember correctly, about 275,000 people to about 1.3, 1.4 million people at the moment. So it's like it's a, you know, five, almost six times the people in a really short period of time with no infrastructure. Yeah, yeah. Like we can see all those people see all those massive tent cities. This is something that when we first saw it, we couldn't believe it, how widespread

it is. In some places, there are 20 people living in a tent. In many of them, actually. It's about those are the numbers, whole families. And it's important to note that those people escape bombardments. So it means that some of those are wounded, pregnant women, babies being born into those conditions. We know that in basically every corner of the city of Rafa, of that area, we can see tents.

At the beginning, we saw the tents only on the outskirts where they have all those like wide open sandy areas but then we know then we noted in the photos that basically the streets are completely filled with tents people said that like you basically can't drive a car through the streets because they're so dense. And some Palestinians also like they're trying like some of them. But this is also something that we hear. They got to like they came to Afa and then they understood it. It's so dense that they started saying that they rather die in their homes.

And this is why they started moving back northwards. The conditions are very, very severe. So Israel has already attacked Rafah a number of times, including on Sunday, a large operation. Can you tell me about the incursion on Sunday? Yeah, there was a massive airstrike. Basically, it was a part of an operation to release hostages. It was a rare operation in which hostages were released alive. Rescued after four months in captivity, the Israeli military says these men, 61-year-old Fernando Simon Marman and 70-year-old Louis Haar, have been rescued from a residential building in Rafah. Up until now, throughout the whole war, there were three hostages, all in all, two of which

now, like on Sunday, the army managed to release successfully still alive. So the IDF is now planning a ground invasion in Rafah. Prime Minister Netanyahu says that this is needed to root out for Hamas battalions that are stationed there. We're not cavalier about this. This is part of our war effort to get civilians out of harm's way. It's part of Hamas's effort to keep them in harm's way. But we've so far succeeded and we're going to succeed again.

In terms of the civilians sheltering there, where would they go? That's the hot issue of the moment. That's a huge problem, because what Israel and the IDF are saying, the government and the IDF are saying, is that they can't destroy Hamas, they can't dismantle Hamas without moving into Rafah, because they said that this is the last area of the strip where Hamas still really dominates and operates. Those who say that under no circumstances should we enter Rafah are basically saying, lose the war, keep Hamas there. And Hamas has promised to do the October 7th massacre over and over and over again.

The fact is that all those people, they have basically nowhere to go to. The question where they would go to is left unanswered. I asked the IDF where those people are supposed to go, and they still haven't answered it. And that's a question we've been posing the idea for quite a while now now people like they bring up all kind of ideas about building tent cities in other places of the strip but it's really it's hard to grasp the amount of people 1.3 million people that would have like wounded and sick and many of them children. And under those conditions, after several months of war without anything with themion in Rafah is getting so much attention from around the world. Yeah, what are NGOs and humanitarian groups saying?

So the prosecutor from the ICC, the International Criminal Court, has warned against it. And he said that he's following it. And Doctors Without Borders, they advise, it's more than advice, they're opposing it and say that Israel mustn't do it. We can see that the UN says that the implications to the civilian population would be really severe. Aid groups whose workers are also trapped aren't alone in their condemnation of the plan. The EU, the UN and heads of neighboring countries have all warned of dire consequences. Egypt, on the other side of this border, even threatening to pull out of the Camp David Accords, a landmark treaty that brought stability to the region for nearly 50 years. So a lot of organizations on many levels

are explaining that it's going to be a bloodbath. And Israel at the moment is pushing onwards with this idea. We still don't know when it's going to happen and exactly how, but at the moment it's a heavily discussed idea i think it's also important to note a lot of humanitarian aid comes through rafa like that area so those people that uh that are amassing over there now they have some access to relative humanitarian aid it's hardly enough but they do have some access to it. And if all those people

should be displaced once again to other parts of the Strip, it means that they will be further away from humanitarian aid. And according to sources that I've been speaking with, they will have trouble getting aid to those parts unless conditions would change. This is, for example, why aid doesn't reach the north of the Strip because they don't have access to it due to the war. So that's also a consequence of what should happen if this ground incursion will move forward. We've been tracing the path of death and destruction as the wars progressed, as the civilian populations pushed from north to south down through the Gaza Strip.

And Prime Minister Netanyahu has stated that there are two goals that are the whole reason behind this, that the military operation has two goals. That is freeing the hostages and destroying Hamas. So just briefly, can you help me understand how close is the Israeli government to achieving either of these goals? The situation is quite grim. When it comes to destroying Hamas, it seems that it's pretty far off. Hamas is a very large organization. It's heavily embedded. And beyond that, we can see, I think, that this is something that was an incentive for this investigation, was to show that just in order to reach that moment in the war, like that stage

in the war, the damage and the destruction across the street was just immense. So just thinking about what kind of additional damage and destruction it would have to create to society, to Palestinian society, to Gazans in order to completely destroy Hamas, I think there is a very long road. And personally, I don't see it happening in that path. When it comes to the hostages, the situation is tragic. Dozens of them were released via a deal at the beginning of the war. Three of them were released by the IDF.

We know that 30 of them are known to be dead. And that means that about 100 approximately, as far as we know, they're still alive, but in very severe conditions and under life danger. The way forward should be a deal, which is there are all kinds of talks and mediators, etc. But the political conditions, they don't really allow for things to move forward. Netanyahu has no space to maneuver, since his coalition relies on the extreme right, which is very, very hawkish and threatens to break the coalition should Netanyahu make any concessions to Hamas. It's also important to note that Israeli society is heavily traumatized from the massacre, which included torture and rape and a lot of horrible things that many people were exposed to via videos here in Israel.

So people are having a hard time coming to terms with the idea of having a neighbor, such as Hamas, meaning they're opposing concessions. And then Hamas is also demanding a lot, a complete withdrawal from the strip. So the gap is pretty huge between the sides. And the political situation in Israel, mainly because of Netanyahu's personal position and the demands of the extreme right, makes it difficult for the deal to move forward. And hostages, which don't have any time to waste, they keep on dying. And that's the situation is very tragic. It seems inevitable that you're going to be covering a lot more death and destruction for the time being.

Unfortunately. Yeah. Then thank you so much for coming on and talking about your reporting. We really appreciate it. Thank you for having me. All right. That's it for today. I'm Damon Fairless.

Thanks for listening to FrontBurner. I'll talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.