The Israel he wants to acquire a stock of tents that can accommodate nearly half a million people ahead of his attack on Rafawhich it claims is the last stronghold of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, a government source told AFP today.

The announcement of the public tender, published on the website of the Ministry of Defense, concerns on the market 40,000 tents with 12 seats eachi.e. 480,000 seats.

“I confirm that a tender has been opened for the Gaza Strip,” said the source, who asked not to be named, without specifying where the tents would be installed.

The Israeli army estimates that the Hamas maintains four battalions in Rafah, a city on the southern tip of the Gaza Strip near the closed border with Egypt, where nearly 1.5 million Gazans have taken refuge to escape Israeli bombardment and fighting that has raged since the Islamist group’s unprecedented attack Palestinian movement on October 7 in Israel.

Despite opposition from the United States, which fears high civilian casualties, the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu declares himself determined to launch the attack against Rafa. Yesterday, Monday, he even announced that a date has been set, without revealing what it is.

“This will happen – there is a date,” he said in a video message, six months after the war began.

Israeli officials reiterated that such an attack was planned after the announcement on Sunday that Israeli troops were withdrawing from the city Khan Yunisthe largest in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, the focus of fighting between the army and Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007.

Since then, thousands of Palestinians who had fled have returned to Khan Younis, AFP found, but most of them found their homes in ruins or uninhabitable, leaving them on the streets.

The United States favors targeted operations in Rafah and expresses fears about whether it is possible to remove so many residents before an attack.