Israeli forces intensified their bombing of the city of Rafah on the border with Egypt in the southern Gaza Strip, to which more than half of the Strip's population was displaced.

This came a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected a proposal to end the war in the Strip, defying the world that expressed its concern as the war expanded south.

The United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Tor Wensland, warned of the “catastrophic” consequences of any Israeli attack on Rafah, which is crowded with civilians. He pointed to intense discussions taking place between Israel and Egypt about what could be done along the Philadelphia axis. It is a demilitarized buffer zone on the Gaza border with Egypt, under the 1979 Israeli-Egyptian peace agreement.

Wensland revealed, in a rare press conference inside the United Nations headquarters in New York, before heading to Washington to hold a series of meetings with officials in the administration of President Joe Biden, that this issue was the subject of discussion by US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, with both Cairo and Israel. He added that he does not see a way out of this conflict except for the two parties to sit down and talk about the issue.