By Athena Papakosta

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu makes it clear that he intends to go ahead with plans to attack the city of Rafah rejecting international criticism and defying US President Joe Biden’s warning that a large-scale Israeli attack on the city that has become the last refuge for civilians in the Gaza Strip is a “red line” for Washington.

Speaking to the American network MSNBC, the American president clarified that will not tolerate ‘30,000 more Palestinian dead’ underlining that Benjamin Netanyahu “must pay more attention to the innocent lives that are being lost.”

The international community and international organizations have repeatedly warned that an attack on the town of Rafah, which lies on the border with Egypt and where more than half of the Gaza Strip’s 2.3 million people have taken refuge, would cause human losses worse than even the most pessimistic forecasts.

For Benjamin Netanyahu Israel’s dominance of Rafah is ‘a matter of four or six weeks’ and responding to Joe Biden he explains that “the red line is October 7th never to happen again.”

Today marks the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, and while truce negotiations are stalled after the latest round of talks in Cairo broke down, the United States and Jordan launched new humanitarian aid airdrops yesterday, Sunday.

At the same time, the European Union and the United States have announced that they are preparing a sea corridor starting from Cyprus so that humanitarian aid can also be transported by sea to the Gaza Strip. The “Gen. Frank S. Besson’ of the US Army for the construction of the floating, temporary, platform.

The first boat with humanitarian aid to leave for the Palestinian enclave is the Spanish Open Arms, which belongs to the Spanish charity of the same name and docked three weeks ago in Larnaca.

It is understood that it is expected to tow care items provided by the American charity World Central Kitchen, while, at the same time, it remains unknown where it will be able to moor due to the damage the port has suffered from the bombings.

The Israel-Hamas war has been raging since last October and has plunged the Palestinian enclave into an unprecedented humanitarian crisis with the UN warning that at least 576,000 civilians – a quarter of the total population – are on the brink of starvation.

Trucks with humanitarian aid enter through the Rafah crossing in the south which is controlled by Egypt but also from the crossing of Kerem Shalom which is controlled by Israel.

But the north of the Gaza Strip – which was the focus of the first phase of the Israeli ground operation and where 300,000 people still live without food and drinking water – remains cut off after the World Food Program has cut off humanitarian aid deliveries to it because of the unsafe conditions for its distribution.

Israel denies that it is blocking the flow of aid, while there are not a few who accuse the Israeli leadership of using malnutrition as a weapon.