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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, brushing aside a chorus of international condemnation, said Sunday that an invasion of the southern Gazan city of Rafah would move forward as soon as Israel completed plans for the more than a million people sheltering there to be allowed to move to safety.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose who say that under no circumstances should we enter Rafah are basically saying: \u2018Lose the war,\u2019\u201d Mr. Netanyahu said on This Week With George Stephanopoulos<\/a>.<\/p>\n But given the complexity of an operation in Rafah, a ground invasion does not appear likely to happen any time soon, analysts said. More than half of Gaza\u2019s 2.2 million residents fled there to avoid fighting farther north, packing the city with refugees with nowhere else to go.<\/p>\n One Hamas official, Basem Naim, said Mr. Netanyahu was \u201cdeluding himself\u201d if he thought that threatening to invade Rafah would increase the pressure on Palestinian negotiators to agree to Israel\u2019s terms for a cease-fire. More than 28,000 people in Gaza, many of them women and children, have already been killed since the war began in October, Gazan health officials say,<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cSuch an invasion would mean more massacres and intensify the humanitarian disaster,\u201d Mr. Naim said in a text message on Sunday.<\/p>\n Yaakov Amidror, a retired Israeli general and national security adviser, said that while Israel \u201cmust go into Rafah\u201d to achieve its objectives of dismantling Hamas\u2019s military capabilities and its ability to rule the Gaza Strip, the invasion would take time to plan.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is not imminent,\u201d said Mr. Amidror, now a fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategic Studies, a conservative think tank, \u201cbut it will have to be done.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Netanyahu insisted that Israel is serious about protecting civilians. \u201cWe\u2019re not cavalier about this,\u201d Mr. Netanyahu said. \u201cThis is part of our war effort, to get civilians out of harm\u2019s way.\u201d<\/p>\n In a telephone conversation on Sunday, President Biden told the Israeli prime minister that a military operation in Rafah should precede only with \u201ca credible and executable plan\u201d for ensuring the safety of the people taking shelter there, according to the White House.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n For weeks, Israel has been discussing plans to send troops to Rafah, where it had directed Palestinians to go for safety, despite a growing demand from world leaders that it agree to a cease-fire. Mr. Netanyahu has publicly rejected<\/a> Hamas\u2019s latest offer for a pause in fighting that would open the way for the release of the hostages seized when Hamas-led raiders attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing, Israeli officials say, about 1,200 people.<\/p>\n But the Netanyahu government has signaled<\/a> that it is still open to negotiations, and the Biden administration has said they will continue in the days ahead.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n