JERUSALEM - The United Nations warned on May 10 that aid for the Gaza Strip could grind to a halt in days, as Israeli troops took their ground war into the crowded city of Rafah, a key aid corridor for the famine-threatened enclave.

Israeli tanks captured the main road dividing the eastern and western sections of Rafah, effectively encircling the eastern part of the city in an assault that has caused Washington to block some military aid to its ally.

Residents described almost constant explosions and gunfire east and north-east of the city on May 10, with intense fighting between Israeli forces and militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Hamas said it ambushed Israeli tanks near a mosque, a sign the Israelis have penetrated several kilometres from the east to the outskirts of the built-up area.

Israel has ordered civilians out of the eastern part of Rafah, forcing tens of thousands of people to seek shelter outside the city, previously the last refuge of more than a million who fled other parts of the enclave during the war.

Israel says it cannot win the war without assaulting Rafah to root out thousands of Hamas fighters it believes are sheltering there. Hamas says it will fight to defend it.

Supplies were already running short and aid operations could halt within days as fuel and food stocks get used up, United Nations aid agencies said on May 10.

“For five days, no fuel and virtually no humanitarian aid entered the Gaza Strip, and we are scraping the bottom of the barrel,” said Unicef’s senior emergency coordinator in Gaza, Mr Hamish Young.

Aid agencies say the battle has already put hundreds of thousands of already displaced civilians in harm’s way.

“It is not safe. All of Rafah isn’t safe, as tank shells landed everywhere since yesterday,” Mr Abu Hassan, 50, a resident of Tel al-Sultan, west of Rafah, told Reuters via a chat app.

“I am trying to leave, but I can’t afford 2,000 shekels (S$73o) to buy a tent for my family,” he said. “There is an increased movement of people out of Rafah even from the western areas, though they were not designated as red zones by the occupation.

“The army is targeting all of Rafah, not only the east, with tank shells and air strikes.”

Israeli tanks have already sealed off eastern Rafah from the south, capturing and shutting the only crossing between the enclave and Egypt. An advance on May 10 to the Salahuddin road that bisects Gaza completed the encirclement of the “red zone” where they have ordered residents out.

“Over the course of the last three days or so, the situation has really deteriorated incredibly dramatically in Rafah,” said Dr James Smith, a British emergency room doctor volunteering at the European Hospital just north of Rafah.

“The number of air strikes has increased. The number of artillery strikes has increased, and we’ve heard that heavy military equipment, tanks and so on, have been on the streets of eastern Rafah and also been to the Rafah border crossing with Egypt,” he said in a voice message forwarded to Reuters by a colleague.

“All humanitarian aid convoys have been unable to pass into Gaza from the south for the last couple of days. No fuel has entered, and already the UN is planning for the worst-case scenarios, rationing fuel for essential activities only.”

The Israeli military said its forces in eastern Rafah located several tunnel shafts, and troops backed by an air strike fought at close quarters with groups of Hamas fighters, killing several.

It said Israeli jets hit several sites from which rockets and mortars were fired towards Israel in recent days, including at the Kerem Shalom crossing point.

Fight with fingernails

The prospect of a full assault on Rafah this week has opened up one of the biggest rifts for generations between Israel and its closest ally, the United States, which has blocked shipments of weapons to Israel for the first time since the war began.

Israelis are ready to fight with their “fingernails”, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on May 9 in a thinly veiled rebuff to US President Joe Biden’s warning that arms supplies could be withheld over a planned operation in Gaza.

The Biden administration has said it cannot support a major Rafah invasion in the absence of what it would deem a credible plan to safeguard non-combatants.

The Netanyahu government had kept silent over reports that Washington was holding back a shipment of aerial bombs – until, on May 8, Mr Biden went public with the measure, saying it was part of a US warning to the Israelis not to “go into Rafah”.

“If we must stand alone, we shall stand alone,” Mr Netanyahu said without referring specifically to the US announcement.

“If we must, we shall fight with our fingernails,” he said in a video statement. “But we have much more than our fingernails, and with that strength of spirit, with God’s help, together we shall be victorious.”

But Mr Netanyahu said in an interview on US television he hopes he and Mr Biden can overcome their disagreements over the Gaza war.

“We often had our agreements but we’ve had our disagreements. We’ve been able to overcome them,” he said on the Dr Phil Primetime show.

“I hope we can overcome them now, but we will do what we have to do to protect our country,” he said.

The conservative prime minister’s comments in the video statement were echoed by the other two voting members of his war Cabinet - Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and centrist former defence minister Benny Gantz – although none said explicitly that a deeper sweep of Rafah would be ordered.

“I turn to Israel’s enemies as well as to our best of friends and say – the State of Israel cannot be subdued,” Mr Gallant said in a speech. “We will stand strong, we will achieve our goals – we will hit Hamas, we will hit (Lebanon’s) Hezbollah, and we will achieve security.”

Mr Gantz voiced appreciation for what the Israeli military has described as unprecedented US support and supplies in the war.

“Israel has a duty, in terms of national security and morality, to keep fighting in order to return our hostages and end the Hamas threat against southern Israel,” he said on X. “And the United States has a moral and strategic duty to extend to Israel the tools that are necessary for this mission.”

In parallel to the public dispute, the United States has been trying to shepherd along Egyptian- and Qatari-mediated talks between Israel and Hamas that would free some hostages.

Those have stumbled on Hamas’ demand for an end to the Gaza war. Israel is willing to enter a ceasefire only. Negotiators on May 9 left the latest meetings in Cairo without a deal, and Israel said it would proceed with its planned Rafah operation.

The chief Israeli military spokesperson, Rear-Admiral Daniel Hagari, said in a briefing that the armed forces had sufficient munitions for Rafah “and other operations that are planned”. REUTERS