JERUSALEM ¨C Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel insisted Saturday that Israel would not bow to international pressure to call off its plan for a ground invasion of Rafah, the southernmost city in the Gaza Strip that is now packed with more than 1 million Palestinians.
Many of the people now in Rafah are displaced and living in schools, tents or the homes of friends and relatives, part of a desperate search for any safe refuge from Israel¡¯s military campaign, which has dragged on for more than four months. Their lives are a daily struggle to find enough food and water to survive.
¡°Those who want to prevent us from operating in Rafah are basically telling us: Lose the war,¡± Netanyahu said at a news conference in Jerusalem on Saturday evening. ¡°It¡¯s true that there¡¯s a lot of opposition abroad, but this is exactly the moment that we need to say that we won¡¯t be doing a half or a third of the job.¡±
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