Israeli forces push deeper into Rafah

RAFAH, May 12 (AP/AFP/Reuters): Israeli forces were battling Palestinian militants across the Gaza Strip on Sunday, including in parts of the devastated north that the military said it had cleared months ago, where Hamas has exploited a security vacuum to regroup.

Israel has portrayed the southern Gaza city of Rafah as Hamas' last stronghold, saying it must invade in order to succeed in its goals of dismantling the group and returning scores of hostages. A limited operation there has expanded in recent days, forcing some 300,000 people to flee and drawing warnings from Egypt, where an official said it is putting the country's decades-old peace treaty with Israel at risk.

But the rest of the war-ravaged territory seems to provide ample opportunities for Hamas. Israel has yet to offer a detailed plan for postwar governance in Gaza, saying only that it will maintain open-ended security control over the coastal enclave, which is home to some 2.3 million Palestinians.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected postwar plans proposed by the United States for the Palestinian Authority, which administers parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, to govern Gaza with support from Arab and Muslim countries. Those plans depend on progress toward the creation of a Palestinian state, something to which Netanyahu's government is deeply opposed.

Full-scale Rafah offensive 'cannot

take place': UN rights chief

A full-scale Israeli assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah "cannot take place", the UN human rights chief insisted Sunday, saying it could not be reconciled with international law.

All eyes have been on Rafah in recent weeks, where the population had swelled to around 1.5 million after hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled fighting in other areas of the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli military on Saturday expanded an evacuation order for eastern Rafah and said 300,000 Palestinians had left the area.

"The latest evacuation orders affect close to a million people in Rafah. So where should they go now? There is no safe place in Gaza!" Volker Turk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, said in a statement.

Protesters return to streets across

Israel demanding hostage release

Thousands of Israelis took to the streets on Saturday demanding that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government do more to secure the release of hostages being held in the Gaza Strip by Islamist group Hamas.

Family members of the hostages, carrying pictures of their loved ones still in captivity, joined the crowds that demonstrated in Tel Aviv.

One of them was Naama Weinberg, whose cousin Itai Svirsky was abducted during Hamas' Oct 7 assault on Israeli towns and, according to Israeli authorities, was killed in captivity. In a speech she referenced a video Hamas made public on Saturday, claiming that another of the Israeli captives had died.

"Soon, even those who managed to survive this long will no longer be among the living. They must be saved now," Weinberg said.

As the evening progressed, some protesters blocked a main highway in the city before being dispersed by police, who used water cannons to push back the crowd. At least three people were arrested.