Report: Israel to Buy 40,000 Tents Ahead of Rafah Operation

Pictures of tents set up by the Egyptian and Palestinian Red Crescent for Palestinians dis
Saher Alghorra / Middle East Images / AFP via Getty

The Israeli government is reportedly buying 40,000 tents for use by Palestinian civilians ahead of a possible attack on Hamas in Rafah, the southern Gaza city that is the last stronghold of the terrorist organization’s last four battalions.

The Times of Israel and the Associated Press reported Tuesday:

An Israeli official confirms that Israel is purchasing 40,000 tents to prepare for the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from the southernmost Gaza city of Rafah.

The population of Rafah has swelled to more than one million people — or half of Gaza’s total population — since the start of the war as civilians evacuated southward to flee the fighting between Israel and Hamas. As such, the international community, including the US, opposes the offensive, saying it would endanger Palestinian civilians.

Israel has said it has a plan to evacuate civilians ahead of its offensive, and the Defense Ministry on Monday published a tender seeking a supplier of tents.

Israeli government spokesman David Mencer, responding to a question from Breitbart News, said that he could not comment on specific reports, but confirmed: “I can say that we are preparing shelters” ahead of a Rafah operation.

The U.S. has insisted that Israel prepare a plan for evacuating civilians from Rafah if it is going to invade. Israel has approved such a plan, but the Biden administration has said that it is inadequate, leading to public disagreement.

Mencer also said that a record 419 aid trucks had entered Gaza on Monday, bringing the two-day total to 741 trucks. He added that only 267 of those trucks had been distributed by the United Nations after entering Gaza. Before the war, there were 70 food trucks a day going into Gaza, he said. He said there was enough food entering Gaza to feed everyone in Gaza, and cited reports of bustling markets in both northern and southern Gaza where aid was being sold.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

Photo: file

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