Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned the Israeli army against launching a ground offensive on Rafah in the south of Gaza, claiming the attack would be “a risk we can’t afford to take.”
The patience of the international community has reached a point from where I don’t think they’ll be able to absorb it.
The Israeli army plans to launch a ground offensive on Rafah, which houses more than 1.4 million Palestinians, to defeat what Tel Aviv calls the remaining “Hamas battalions.”
Olmert, who headed the government from 2006-2009, stated that any ground attack on Rafah might “shatter the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt,” which signed the Camp David Accords in 1979, under which Israel withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula.
The former PM called on Netanyahu to end the war in Gaza and focus on a plan that would allow the army to leave the Palestinian territory and let international forces enter as peacekeepers.
Israel is facing genocide charges at the International Court of Justice filed by South Africa. An interim order issued in January ordered the country to stop acts of genocide and take measures to guarantee humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza.
