May 3 (UPI) — A ground operation conducted by the Israel Defense Forces in the Gaza city of Rafah “could lead to a slaughter,” the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Friday.
“Any ground operation would mean more suffering and death,” OCHA spokesperson Jens Laerke told journalists in Geneva Friday, referring to some 1.2 million displaced Palestinians sheltering in or around the southernmost city in the Gaza Strip.
The World Health Organization issued a similar statement Friday, saying any on-the-ground military operation could become a humanitarian “catastrophe.”
The comments from the two U.N. agencies come just days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made it clear that an invasion of Rafah will go forward regardless of what transpires from ongoing negotiations to free hostages held in captivity by the terrorist group Hamas in the Palestinian enclave.
Netanyahu confirmed Tuesday, Israeli forces would enter Rafah and “eliminate the Hamas battalions there…with or without a deal, in order to achieve the total victory.”
The WHO on Friday cautioned against such a move.
“This contingency plan is Band-Aids. It will absolutely not prevent the expected substantial additional mortality and morbidity caused by a military operation,”WHO Representative in the Occupied Palestinian Territory Dr. Rik Peeperkorn said during a video message from Jerusalem Friday.
“The ailing health system will not be able to withstand the potential scale of devastation that the incursion will cause.”
Peeperkorn warned any IDF military operation would contribute to the already existing displacement of people living in Gaza, as well as less access to essential food, water and sanitation.
Those conditions, he said, would “definitely” lead to more outbreaks of disease.
“The health system is barely surviving…if any (Israeli) operation will happen which means the population and patients will not be able to access these hospitals, what is going to happen to these patients; ultimately that would be a catastrophe,” WHO team leader in Gaza Dr. Ahmed Dahir said Friday in the same video statement as Peeperkorn.
The comments come the same day volunteers from aid group World Central Kitchen returned to work and prepared food for Palestinians in need in Rafah, amid ongoing Israeli airstrikes in southern Gaza.
