TEHRAN - Israeli strikes against the Gaza Strip continue unabated as the death toll from the regime’s genocidal war that began in early October surpasses 35,000.

Since a week ago, Israel has focused its offensive on Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, ordering a large number of civilians to evacuate. 

The city had been sheltering more than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million population. Most of them had fled Israeli strikes in other parts of the Gaza Strip. 

Israel had threatened to carry out a ground invasion into Rafah for months. Prime Minister Benjamiin Netanyahu had said the regime’s “total victory” over Hamas won’t be achieved without a ground offensive in Rafah. 

On May 7, Israeli troops seized the main border crossing at Rafah, closing a vital route for aid into the besieged territory.

Israeli tanks and troops entered the Rafah crossing a day after Hamas said it had accepted an Egyptian-Qatari mediated ceasefire proposal. But Israel insisted the proposal did not meet its demands.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said on Monday that nearly 360,000 people have fled Rafah over the past week. 

Most of them are heading to the heavily damaged nearby city of Khan Younis or Muwasi as the Israeli army moves deeper into Rafah. 

It is a coastal tent camp where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are already living in squalid conditions.

UN agencies and aid organizations have warned that an Israeli full-scale assault on Rafah would further cripple humanitarian operations and cause a surge in civilian deaths.

During the past seven months, Israel has not only targeted residential buildings but it has also bombed and raided hospitals and perpetrated massacres there. 

Fears are now growing over a potential genocide if Israel expands its offensive in Rafah. 

But the Netanyahu regime has turned a blind eye to such warnings as the US and its Western allies refuse to take practical actions to halt Israel’s killing machine.  

According to the Palestinian health officials in Gaza, 70 percent of more than 35,000 Palestinians who have been killed in Gaza are women and children. 

Israeli genocide 

Israel stands accused of genocide against Palestinians in a case brought by South Africa at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). In January, the ICJ, also known as the World Court, issued an interim ruling that found there was a plausible risk of genocide in the Gaza Strip in the wake of Israel’s onslaught. It ordered the regime to refrain from any acts that could fall under the Genocide Convention and to ensure its forces commit no genocidal acts against Palestinians.

Protection of Palestinians 

Last month, Colombia asked The Hague-based ICJ, to allow the South American country to join South Africa’s case. 

In an application to the court in April, it said, “Colombia’s ultimate goal in this endeavor is to ensure the urgent and fullest possible protection for Palestinians in Gaza, in particular such vulnerable populations as women, children, persons with disabilities and the elderly.”

Turkey followed suit earlier this month. Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said his country has decided to join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the ICJ in support of the Palestinian people. 

On Sunday, Cairo also announced it will formally join the case filed by Pretoria at the UN’s top court. 

The Egyptian Foreign Ministry said the country's decision “comes in light of the worsening severity and scope of Israeli attacks against Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip, and the continued perpetration of systematic practices against the Palestinian people, including direct targeting of civilians and the destruction of infrastructure in the Strip, and pushing Palestinians to flee.”

Earlier, reports suggested that Egypt has threatened to scrap the Camp David Accords if Israel presses ahead with the Rafah offensive. 

Israel and Egypt signed the Camp David Accords in 1978, which led to a peace treaty between the two sides a year later. 

In fact, it was the first such treaty between Israel and any of its Arab neighbors. 

Crossing a red line

The recent developments highlighted the tense relationship and distrust between Cairo and Tel Aviv, over the latter’s war on Gaza. 

The assistant professor of public policy at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies believes Egypt has reached a point where it understands the situation in Gaza is “out of control” and it cannot trust either Israel or the US. 

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Tamer Qarmout added that Israel’s seizure of the Rafah border crossing amounted to crossing a red line for Egypt. 

He said the Egyptians are worried now that Israel will push Palestinian civilians into the Sinai Peninsula.

Egypt has repeatedly raised the alarm over the possibility that Israel’s offensive could send desperate Gazans into Sinai. 

In October 2023, Israel acknowledged that the regime’s Intelligence Ministry had drafted "a wartime proposal" to transfer Gaza’s entire population to Sinai. 

At that time President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said Egyptians in their millions would reject the forced displacement of Palestinians into the peninsula. 

Israel’s seizure of the Rafah crossing is a violation of the Camp David Accords and Egypt has realized that the regime is untrustworthy. 

Egypt is the first Arab country that signed a peace deal with Israel. Over the past few years, several other Arab countries have decided to normalize ties with the regime. 

Nonetheless, Israel’s brutal attacks in Gaza and the West Bank as well as its acts of aggression against Syria and Lebanon clearly show that normalization of relations with Arab nations is just a smokescreen for the regime to achieve its political and military goals. 

Israel is an occupying regime which has butchered a large number of people in the Palestinian territories over the past decades. 

The massacres in Gaza over the past seven months are just the tip of the iceberg. 

Arab countries should wake up to the fact that they cannot change the fascist and savage nature of the Israeli regime through talks. 

Palestinians have crushed Israel’s image of invincibility by putting up stiff resistance. Israel’s failure to eliminate Hamas after seven months of war indicates that only resistance and resilience can bring an end to the regime’s decades-long occupation of the Palestinian lands.