Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has approved plans for an offensive in Rafah after a meeting of his war cabinet, his office said Friday. "The IDF is preparing for the operational side and for the evacuation of the population," his office said, per CNN. More than a million people, most of them displaced from elsewhere in Gaza, are in Rafah and Israel says they will be moved to "humanitarian islands." A look:
- Dire conditions. The New York Times looks at the dire conditions in Rafah, which was home to fewer than 300,000 people before the war but is now packed with 1.4 million people, more than half of Gaza's prewar population, according to a United Nations estimate. Most people in Rafah spend their days struggling to meet basic needs: "finding clean water for drinking and bathing, getting enough food, and calming their children when Israeli strikes hit nearby," the Times reports. They now fear that even that precarious existence is threatened by the Israeli offensive.