THE Minister of Foreign Affairs of Norway warned today against an Israeli army operation in Rafah, the last refuge for more than a million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and called for a “sustainable ceasefire”.

“I urgently repeat my warning against a ground operation in Rafah. There is no longer a safe place in Gaza,” Espen Barth Eide wrote in X.

“A military operation will worsen the already catastrophic situation and make the delivery of humanitarian support virtually impossible,” he added. “We need a sustainable ceasefire now.”

THE Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu he recently asked his army to prepare an attack on Rafah, where 1.4 million Palestinians are crammed, according to the UN, more than half of Gaza’s residents.

Yesterday Monday he reiterated his determination to maintain “military pressure until total victory” on Hamas, whose Rafah is “the last bastion”, so that “all the hostages” are released.