Potential Rafah assault casualty rate would make regional peace ‘very difficult’: Scholz

Berlin, March 17 – The large number of civilian casualties that would result from an Israeli assault on the Gazan city Rafah would make regional peace “very difficult,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Sunday after talks with Jordanian King Abdullah, media reported.

He added that this is one of the main arguments he will bring to talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later on Sunday during his visit to Gaza, The Times of Israel reported.

The hastily arranged talks come after Netanyahu said on Friday that he had approved a plan for an offensive on the southern Gaza city.

“Right now, it is about ensuring we come to a long-lasting ceasefire,” Scholz said after talks with Abdullah at the monarch’s private residence in the Jordanian Red Sea port of Aqaba.

“That would enable us to prevent such a ground offensive from taking place.”

Asked if he was prepared to exert pressure on Netanyahu to stop such an assault, the German Chancellor added that it is “very clear we must do everything so the situation does not get worse than it already is”.

“Israel has every right to protect itself… At the same time, it cannot be that those in Gaza who fled to Rafah are directly threatened by whatever military actions and operations are undertaken there.”

Israel has vowed to move into Rafah to eliminate the last Hamas stronghold there. It also believes that some of the hostages and Hamas leaders are in Rafah. Last month, special forces rescued two Israeli hostages from captivity in an apartment in the city, The Times of Israel reported.

Over half of the Gaza Strip’s population has fled to Rafah during the war sparked by Hamas’s devastating attack on October 7. The offensive in Gaza has displaced most of the enclave’s 2.3 million people and led to critical shortages of food, water and medicine.

Scholz did not directly answer a question about whether Germany would react to a large-scale Rafah offensive, for example by restricting German weapons exports to Israel.

Germany has been one of Israel’s staunchest allies alongside the US, consistently supporting Israel’s right to defend itself, stressing Germany’s duty to stand by the country’s side in atonement for its perpetration of the Nazi Holocaust in which six million Jews died.