PALESTINIANS trapped in Rafah on Gaza-Egypt border said today they have nowhere left to run to now Israel has announced it will invade the former “safe zone.”

Defence Minister Yoav Gallant claimed late on Thursday that Israel had “disbanded” Hamas in the central city of Khan Younis and would now “complete the mission there and continue to Rafah.”

Whether Hamas has been defeated in Khan Younis is unclear. Israeli leaders have publicly disagreed over the success of their invasion, with cabinet minister and former Israel Defence Forces chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot saying last month that claims of Hamas’s defeat in northern Gaza were “tall tales.”

Over 1.9 million of Gaza’s 2.4 million people are crowded into Rafah, as Israel has repeatedly warned Palestinians to flee south while its active war zone, which began in northern Gaza, has expanded. 

Egypt’s border is closed — the country has long been complicit in Israel’s siege of Gaza, though it currently says it will not open its border because Israeli politicians would welcome the mass displacement of Palestinians from Gaza as part of the ethnic cleansing project designed to create a “greater Israel.” This leaves the Palestinians in Rafah — crammed into makeshift tents or sleeping on the streets of the overwhelmed town — without options.

One father of six told the Reuters news agency that when Israeli tanks arrived, his family would have to decide whether to “stay and die or climb the walls into Egypt.”

Israel was accused of the war crime of destroying civilian housing today as an Associated Press analysis found it has been flattening infrastructure to create a buffer zone along the Gaza-Israel border.

Multiple reports have pointed to the systematic demolition of buildings in Gaza, with Israel’s biggest single military loss since the invasion — that of 21 soldiers on January 22 — occurring when the troops, setting explosives to destroy Palestinian houses, were crushed when a rocket fired on them, caused a premature collapse.

The US has warned Israel not to shrink Gaza’s territory, though Israeli ministers attended a conference last week on re-establishing illegal Jewish settlements within Gaza. A buffer zone on the scale suggested by the Associated Press analysis would remove about 20 square miles of Gaza’s 140 square miles of territory.