“We are gravely concerned by indications that Israel is planning a ground offensive into Rafah. A military operation into Rafah would be catastrophic,” the statement by the prime ministers of the three countries said.
“An immediate humanitarian ceasefire is urgently needed.”
Israel will press ahead with an offensive against Hamas in Rafah, the last refuge for displaced Palestinians in southern Gaza, after allowing civilians to vacate the area, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday.
The statement urged Israel not to conduct the offensive, however it said any ceasefire could not be “one sided,” and would require Hamas to disarm and immediately release all remaining hostages.
The leaders also said the International Court of Justice’s January ruling in a genocide case brought by South Africa obligated Israel to protect civilians and deliver basic services and essential humanitarian assistance.
French President Emmanuel Macron told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday that the Gaza death toll was “intolerable” and Israel’s operations there “must cease,” the president’s office said.
In a telephone call that saw Macron toughen his tone, the French leader expressed France’s “firm opposition” to an Israeli offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, saying it “could only lead to a humanitarian disaster of a new magnitude” and create a new risk of regional escalation, according to a statement from the presidential Elysee palace.
The French leader stressed that a ceasefire agreement should be reached “without further delay,” adding such a deal should “guarantee the protection of all civilians and the massive inflow of emergency aid.”
Macron said that the lack of sufficient access to “a population in an absolute humanitarian emergency was unjustifiable,” his office said.
He said it was “imperative to open the port of Ashdod” in Israel north of the Gaza strip, “a direct land route from Jordan and all the crossing points.”
The French president also urged “the prime minister and all Israeli leaders to have the courage to offer their fellow citizens a future of peace,” which he believes only the “creation of a Palestinian state” can achieve, the statement said.
On Tuesday, France said it was imposing sanctions against 28 “extremist Israeli settlers” whom it accuses of committing human rights abuses against Palestinian civilians in the occupied West Bank.
France would also be seeking sanctions at European level, the foreign ministry said.
The latest Gaza war began after Palestinian militant group Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on October 7 that resulted in the deaths of about 1,160 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Militants also took about 250 people hostage, around 130 of whom are still in Gaza, according to Israeli figures. Israel says 29 of the remaining captives are presumed dead.
Israel’s relentless bombardment and ground offensive in Gaza has killed at least 28,576 people, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run health ministry in the Palestinian territory.
“The protection of civilians is paramount and a requirement under international humanitarian law,” the statement said. “Palestinian civilians cannot be made to pay the price of defeating Hamas.”
Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas pressed the militant group Hamas on Wednesday to agree a Gaza deal quickly to avoid “dire consequences,” the official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.
“We call on the Hamas movement to quickly complete a prisoner deal, to spare our Palestinian people from the calamity of another catastrophic event with dire consequences, no less dangerous than the Nakba of 1948,” Abbas said.
The president was referring to the war accompanying the creation of Israel, which saw 760,000 Palestinians flee or forced from their homes.
Abbas’s internationally recognized Palestinian Authority has not been involved in this week’s talks hosted by Egypt, aimed at securing a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel after more than four months of war.
Seated in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, the PA is widely derided by Palestinians who have failed to see their aspirations for statehood realized since 1948.
The United States — Israel’s top military backer and a PA funder — has said it supports the creation of a Palestinian state but wants an overhaul of the leadership.
Washington’s top diplomat, Antony Blinken, said last month Abbas was “committed” to reforming the PA “so that it can effectively take responsibility for Gaza, so that Gaza and the West Bank can be reunited under a Palestinian leadership.”
Gaza has had its own separate administration run by Hamas since 2007 when Abbas loyalists were ousted from the territory.
The UN’s special adviser on the prevention of genocide, Alice Wairimu Nderitu, on Wednesday warned that should Israeli authorities follow through on their threat of a military incursion in Rafah, the risk of atrocities being committed in the territory was “serious, real and high.”
She expressed concern that a ground offensive in the city would “almost certainly have disastrous consequences for the civilians in the area, both those who live there and the more than a million internally displaced persons who have taken refuge in Rafah, fleeing the violence that has afflicted them in the rest of the Gaza Strip.”
Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city has become the last refuge for displaced Palestinians in the territory. But it has come under heavy fire from Israeli air strikes in recent days and at least 95 people have been killed, including 42 children, according to Amnesty International.
Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had ordered his troops to prepare for a ground offensive in the city as he vowed to defeat Hamas gunmen he said were hiding there.
More than half of the Gaza’s population of 2.3 million people is now crammed into Rafah, which is close to the border with Egypt and was home to only 250,000 before the war began in October. Many of the displaced are living in makeshift shelters or tents in squalid conditions, with little or no access to safe drinking water or food.
“It is imperative that the protection of civilians is prioritized and that international humanitarian law is respected at all times,” said Nderitu.
“Enough of violence and enough of the suffering of those who are most vulnerable, in Rafah and in the entire Gaza Strip.”
The UN’s humanitarian chief, Martin Griffiths, warned on Tuesday that an Israeli assault on Rafah could lead to the “slaughter” of Palestinians already suffering as a result of an “assault that is unparalleled in its intensity, brutality and scope.”
Nderitu also stressed the need to release “all hostages, unconditionally,” to ensure that deliveries of humanitarian aid are allowed to reach those who need them most, and for efforts to prevent further violence and reach a sustainable ceasefire to be stepped up.
“Since Oct. 7, civilians in the region have experienced and continue to experience an insurmountable level of suffering. This must end and must end now,” she said.
In a letter sent last week to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, leading Palestinian human rights groups accused Nderitu of failing to fulfill her mandate, after she issued only one statement about the war in Gaza, which they said was largely supportive of Israel.
They accused her of “dereliction of duty in failing to warn of a potential genocide” and said the “glaring absence of any action in response to the sustained mass atrocities endured by Palestinians in Gaza (raises) significant concerns about the special adviser’s capability to execute her mandate with due effectiveness and impartiality.”
