Israel takes control of Gaza side of Rafah crossing

Israel’s military seized control of the Rafah border crossing in Gaza Tuesday, according to officials.

Israeli military tanks rolled into the southern city of Gaza, which is housing around 1.3 million people, early Tuesday.

The seizure of the border crossing, critical for delivering humanitarian aid, comes after militant group Hamas said it would agree to a Qatari-Egyptian cease-fire proposal. However, Israel said the deal was not up to par.

The military said its aircraft struck more than 50 targets on the Gaza side of Rafah. Israel has faced backlash for its planned incursion into the area, an operation President Biden and his administration warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to proceed with.

Netanyahu on Tuesday said the capture of the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing is an “important step” toward dismantling Hamas’s capabilities.

Israel told about 100,000 residents of eastern Rafah to evacuate Monday, a day before Israeli 401st Brigade moved into the crossing, The Associated Press reported. Both Rafah and Kerem Shalom, two major entry points for humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, have been shut down the last two days, according to the AP.

The United Nations’s agency that supplies food and medicine for Palestinians in Gaza, known as the UNRWA, said Tuesday that it will stay in Rafah despite Israel’s incursion. 

“We are staying where we are,” the director of planning at UNRWA, Sam Rose, told Al Jazeera English. “The issue is our ability to continue delivering over a sustained period of time if the crossings remain closed.”

The Israeli military killed 23 Palestinians overnight, according to the AP. In response, Gaza’s Interior Ministry slammed the Israeli military operation in the area and said the crossing does not pose a risk to Israel. 

“The Rafah crossing is a civilian service facility and constitutes the main lifeline for citizens in the Gaza Strip,” the ministry said in a statement Tuesday. “The crossing does not represent any threat to the Israeli occupation.”

The war in Gaza, which began Oct. 7 after Hamas launched a strike on Israel that killed nearly 1,200 people, has driven around 80 percent of the territory’s population from their homes, the AP reported. The death toll in the region from Israel’s response has risen to more than 34,500 people, according to local health officials.

Updated at 12:02 p.m. EDT