Netanyahu vows to carry out Rafah invasion, which U.S. says would be a mistake

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has escalated his pledge to invade the southern Gaza city of Rafah, saying a date has been set for the ground offensive into the city filled with around 1.4 million Palestinians, most of whom are displaced from other parts of the Gaza Strip.

The United States, Israel’s closest ally, has said a ground operation into Rafah would be a mistake and has demanded to see a credible plan to protect civilians. Israel’s offensive has pushed Gaza into a humanitarian crisis, displacing over 80% of the population and leaving more than 1 million people on the brink of starvation.

International efforts to broker a cease-fire between Israel and the militant group Hamas are taking place in Cairo this week.

Egyptian officials said Tuesday that mediators have presented a new cease-fire proposal to Hamas and Israel that would include a six-week pause in fighting and a swap of 40 Hamas-held hostages for at least 700 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. Israel says more than 130 hostages remain in Gaza, with about a quarter of those believed dead.

The Palestinian death toll from the war has passed 33,200, with nearly 76,000 wounded, Gaza’s Health Ministry said. The ministry doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants in its tally, but says women and children make up two-thirds of the dead.

The war began Oct. 7 when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking around 250 people hostage.

In other news, Israel shot down a drone over the Red Sea overnight in what the military described as the first deployment of its naval Iron Dome missile defense system.

The military said that a Corvette warship shot down the drone as it flew east over waters near the southern Israeli city of Eilat. The military released grainy aerial footage of the missile making contact with an aircraft.

It was not immediately clear who was directing the drone. Yemen’s Houthi rebels have been conducting near daily attacks on commercial and military ships in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, launching drones and missiles from rebel-held areas of Yemen.

The Israeli defense system, called the “C-Dome,” is a naval version of the Iron Dome, which has been used to shoot down rockets fired from the Gaza Strip for the past decade.