Netanyahu admits ‘tragic mistake’ after Israeli strike in Rafah

Benjamin Netanyahu has admitted ‘tragic mistake’ after an Israeli strike in Rafah has allegedly killed 45 people including displaced people who burned alive in tents.

The Israeli Prime Minister said Jerusalem was investigating Sunday night’s strike in which the IDF targeted a ‘terrorist compound’, killing senior Hamas officials Yassin Rabia and Khaled Nagar.

Hamas claims the strike killed 45 people at a refugee centre by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees near Rafah, branding it a ‘horrific massacre’. 

The IDF said earlier today that it was ‘aware of reports indicating that as a result of the strike and fire that was ignited, several civilians in the area were harmed. The incident is under review.’

The strike came two days after the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to end its military offensive in Rafah, where more than half of Gaza‘s population had sought shelter before Israel’s recent incursion. 

The Palestinian Red Crescent said its ambulance crews transported ‘a large number’ of people killed and injured in the strikes.

The Palestinian Authority presidency in the West Bank called it a ‘heinous massacre’, accusing Israeli forces of ‘deliberately targeting’ the tents of displaced people.

Sunday night’s attack, which appeared to be one of the war’s deadliest, helped push the overall Palestinian death toll in the war above 36,000, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.

‘We pulled out people who were in an unbearable state,’ said Mohammed Abuassa, who rushed to the scene in the north-western neighbourhood of Tel al-Sultan.  

‘We pulled out children who were in pieces. We pulled out young and elderly people. The fire in the camp was unreal.’

The Gaza Health Ministry said around half of the dead were women, children and older adults. On Monday, barefoot children poked at the blackened debris as searches continued.

The Israeli military’s top legal official said authorities were examining the strikes and that the military regrets the loss of civilian life. 

Military Advocate General Major General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi said such incidents occur ‘in a war of such scope and intensity’.

Speaking to an Israeli lawyers’ conference, Tomer-Yerushalmi said Israel has launched 70 criminal investigations into incidents that aroused suspicions of international law violations, including the deaths of civilians, the conditions at a detention facility holding suspected Palestinian militants and the deaths of some inmates in Israeli custody. 

She said incidents of ‘violence, property crimes and looting’ were also being examined.

Israel has long maintained it has an independent judiciary capable of investigating and prosecuting abuses. 

But rights groups say Israeli authorities routinely fail to fully investigate violence against Palestinians and that even when soldiers are held accountable the punishment is usually light.

The attack, caught on tape by refugees on the ground, resulted in heavy destruction and flames last night.

It left civilians reeling this morning, with photos showing Palestinians searching through burned out tents and makeshift camps for food. 

Israel’s allies further condemned its methods of warfare in the region, with France saying it was ‘outraged’ by the violence.

‘These operations must stop. There are no safe areas in Rafah for Palestinian civilians. I call for full respect for international law and an immediate ceasefire,’ French President Emmanuel Macron posted on X.

Italian Defence Minister Guido Crosetto said that bombings like the one in Rafah will have long-standing repercussions for Israel.

‘Israel with this choice is spreading hatred, rooting hatred that will involve their children and grandchildren. I would have preferred another decision,’ he told SKY TG24.

Qatar, a key mediator between Israel and Hamas in attempts to secure a ceasefire and the release of hostages held by Hamas, said the strikes could ‘complicate’ talks. 

Negotiations, which appear to be restarting, have faltered repeatedly over Hamas’s demand for a lasting truce and the withdrawal of Israeli forces, terms Israeli leaders have publicly rejected.

Neighbouring Egypt and Jordan, which made peace with Israel decades ago, also condemned the Rafah strikes. 

Egypt’s Foreign Ministry described the strike on Tel al-Sultan as a ‘new and blatant violation of the rules of humanitarian international law’. Jordan’s Foreign Ministry called it a ‘war crime‘.

The EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrell said this morning as EU ministers met their Arab counterparts that a ruling made by a UN court for Israel to stop its invasion of Gaza immediately must be implemented. 

Borrell said today: ‘We have to express not only respect, but to ask for the implementation of the decision of the court. This is really a dilemma how the international community can… force implementation of the decision.’

He added that EU ministers were also set to discuss relaunching a mission suspended back in 2007 to monitor the crossing after calls for it to do so from regional players including Israel.

The EU’s top diplomat said he expected to get a preliminary mandate from ministers to press ahead with planning for the mission.

‘But it’s not only us who have to decide – the Egyptians, Palestinian Israelis,’ he said.

‘We need to increase the number of staff and we need to have an agreement with everybody involved.’ 

Washington has also taken a tougher line with its close ally as outrage over the war and US support for Israel has become a major issue for President Joe Biden, seeking re-election in a battle against Donald Trump. 

The United Nations has warned of looming famine in besieged Gaza, where most hospitals are no longer functioning.

Last Monday, the prosecutor at the ICC said he was seeking arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his defence minister as well as for three top Hamas figures.

And on Friday, the UN’s International Court of Justice ordered Israel to halt any operation in Rafah that could bring about ‘the physical destruction’ of the Palestinians.

Hamas’s armed wing said Sunday that it targeted Tel Aviv ‘with a large rocket barrage in response to the Zionist massacres against civilians’.

‘Hamas launched these rockets from near two mosques in Rafah,’ Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said.

The salvo sent people scrambling for shelter but there were no reports of injuries. 

Israel’s army said Sunday at least eight rockets were fired towards central areas of the country from Rafah, with strikes targeting the commercial hub of Tel Aviv for the first time in months.

Fighting has recently centred on Rafah, where Israel’s military launched a ground operation in early May despite widespread opposition over concerns for civilians sheltering there.

Netanyahu vowed to pursue Israel’s offensive ahead of a war cabinet meeting amid intense diplomacy to forge a truce and a hostage-release deal.

He has long rejected Hamas’s demand for a permanent end to the conflict triggered by the Palestinian militant group’s October 7 attack.

A senior Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the war cabinet would ‘discuss a hostage release deal’ on Sunday.

Before the meeting, Netanyahu’s office said Hamas’s chief in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, ‘continues to demand the end of the war, the withdrawal of the IDF from the Gaza Strip and leaving Hamas in place, so that it will be able to carry out the atrocities of October 7 again and again’.

‘Prime Minister Netanyahu strongly opposes this,’ a statement said.

EU members Ireland and Spain, and also Norway, have said they will recognise a Palestinian state from Tuesday, drawing furious Israeli condemnation.

‘In order to make peace, we need a strong Palestinian Authority, not a weaker one,’ said the EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, who met in Brussels with Palestinian prime minister Mohammed Mustafa.

Mustafa, whose government is based in the occupied West Bank, said the ‘first priority’ was to support the people in Gaza, especially through a ceasefire, and then ‘rebuilding the institutions of the Palestinian Authority’ in the territory after Hamas seized it from the PA in 2007.

The Israeli official had said Saturday that ‘there is an intention to renew these talks this week’ after negotiations involving US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators stalled in early May.

Around 80 per cent of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have fled their homes, severe hunger is widespread and UN officials say parts of the territory are experiencing famine.

Hamas triggered the war with its October 7 attack into Israel, in which Palestinian militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians. 

Militants also took 252 hostages, 121 of whom remain in Gaza, including 37 the army says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 35,984 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

As the war grinds on, the families of hostages still held by militants have piled pressure on Netanyahu to secure a deal to free them.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel must take over Rafah to eliminate Hamas’ remaining battalions and achieve ‘total victory’ over the militants, who recently regrouped in other parts of Gaza where the military has operated.