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Awareness of diplomatic fallout has led Israel to downplay offensive, while return to north shows difficulty of eliminating Hamas
• Middle East crisis – live updates
Two elements are particularly striking about the latest evacuation warnings issued by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to residents and displaced people in central Rafah and a considerable part of northern Gaza.
The first is that the warnings for Rafah were put at the bottom of leaflets and social media posts, almost as if the IDF was trying to downplay the coming offensive. This may be because Israeli military officials have told the media for much of the week that they were carrying out “precise, limited and targeted” operations in the city with the sole objective of seizing the key border crossing with Egypt. This is now clearly not the case, if it ever was.
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