Netanyahu directs military to draw up plan for "evacuation of the population" from Rafah

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has directed the military to plan for the “evacuation of the population” from Rafah alongside the defeat of Hamas in that southern Gaza city, his office said in a statement on Friday. 
 
More than 1.3 million people are believed to be in Rafah, the majority displaced from other parts of Gaza, according to the United Nations. 
 
Netanyahu on Thursday said that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) would “soon go into Rafah, Hamas’s last bastion.”
 
In the statement issued Friday, the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said that it was not possible to both eliminate Hamas and leave “four Hamas battalions in Rafah.”
 
“On the other hand, it is clear that a massive operation in Rafah requires the evacuation of the civilian population from the combat zones,” it added. “That is why the Prime Minister directed the IDF and the defense establishment to bring to the Cabinet a dual plan for both the evacuation of the population and the disbanding of the battalions.”
 
Rafah is the last major population center in Gaza not occupied by the IDF.