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TEL AVIV—As tensions with Iran ease , Israel's military is gearing up to complete what it says is unfinished business: Uprooting Hamas from its last stronghold in the Gazan city of Rafah, where more than a million Palestinians are taking shelter.

Israeli leaders say they intend to go ahead despite vocal opposition from the country's most important ally, the U.S., which has warned that a full-scale move on the enclave could cause widespread civilian casualties and disrupt humanitarian-aid efforts aimed at preventing famine.

"In the coming days, we will increase the military and diplomatic pressure on Hamas because it's the only way to release our hostages and achieve our victory," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday in a message to mark Judaism's Passover holiday, which begins Monday evening.

Israel's air force has been hitting targets in Rafah in recent days. A series of strikes on Sunday killed at least 16 Palestinians, the majority of them women and children, according to Wafa, the official news and information agency of the Palestinian Authority. Israel's military said in mid-April that it had called up two reserve brigades "for operational activities on the Gazan front."

Netanyahu has said that Israel plans to evacuate civilians ahead of operations. The military has said it plans to move Gazans to humanitarian enclaves to be constructed within the Gaza Strip, which would include food, water, shelter and medical services.

"One, it's going to happen. Two, we're going to have a very tight operational plan because it's very complex there. Three, there's a humanitarian response that's happening at the same time," said an Israeli security official.

Israel is preparing to move civilians from Rafah to nearby Khan Younis and other areas, where it plans to set up shelters with tents, food-distribution centers and medical facilities such as field hospitals, according to Egyptian officials briefed on the Israeli plans.

That evacuation operation would last two to three weeks and be done in coordination with the U.S., Egypt and other Arab countries such as the United Arab Emirates, the Egyptian officials said. They said Israel plans to move troops into Rafah gradually, targeting areas where Israel believes Hamas leaders and fighters are hiding. The fighting is expected to last at least six weeks, they said.

Israel has faced mounting international pressure to wind down its six-month military campaign in Gaza sparked by Hamas's Oct. 7 assault on southern Israel, which killed around 1,200 people in the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. More than 34,000 people have died in Gaza, according to Palestinian health authorities. The figures don't distinguish between combatants and civilians.

The U.S. has pressed Israel to reconsider a large-scale push into Rafah, citing concerns for civilians as nearly two-thirds of Gazans are estimated to be temporarily sheltering in the city. Many fled their homes as the Israeli army moved south in recent months through the enclave, which is roughly the size of Washington, D.C.

"President Biden has been very clear about this: We cannot support a major military operation in Rafah," Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Friday. Such a move "would have terrible consequences" for any civilians who remained in the city. Israel's war goals, he said, could be achieved by other means.

The overwhelming majority of aid enters the Gaza Strip through two crossings near Rafah. That is also where U.N. agencies and other aid groups are currently based, along with most remaining working hospitals and clinics. Any disruption to aid, especially food, could have devastating repercussions. The U.N. and other international aid agencies have warned Gaza is at risk of famine .

Israel says it must move on Rafah—which sits along Gaza's border with Egypt—to neutralize the military threat posed by Hamas, a U.S.-designated terror organization. Israel's military says it has dismantled 20 of Hamas's 24 military battalions, and must uproot its remaining fighting formations now in Rafah.

Any military action would also be aimed at flushing out top Hamas military leaders and finding the remaining 129 hostages held by the group from its Oct. 7 attacks, many of whom are believed to be held in Rafah. Israel has also said it must cut smuggling routes from Egypt into Gaza that provide war materiel for militants, from fuel to ammunition.

But any major military incursion is also a strategic gamble, especially if a high civilian death toll erodes Israel's international standing and weakens ties with the U.S. Trying to reduce the civilian toll could also make the battlefield more risky for Israeli troops, leading to higher casualty rates.

If Israel fails to get civilians out of harm's way, "I really think this could be a grand strategic disaster for Israel and create one of the leading stressors on the bilateral relationship that we've seen for years," said Bradley Bowman, senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

The timing of any operation remains uncertain. Israel's military will need to deploy more forces into the strip before acting. Earlier this month, Israel reached its lowest troops levels of the war , dropping to a few thousand soldiers to conduct targeted raids and patrol key thoroughfares within Gaza, down from a peak of over 60,000 soldiers last fall.

Uncertainty about the operation's timing hangs over Gazans sheltering in Rafah, who are struggling with whether to leave the city, and where they could go in a devastated strip lacking shelter and services.

Hazer Ghanem, 22, who has been in Rafah since leaving her partially-destroyed Gaza City home in December, said she has packed clothes, documents and some food in case she needs to quickly flee.

However, she isn't certain where she would go if Israel invades Rafah since there has been no clear indication from the Israeli military whether Palestinian civilians will be permitted to return to what is left of their homes in northern Gaza.

"Everyone in Rafah is worried and all people talk about is the ground invasion," said Ghanem.

The incursion risks further upsetting ties with Washington after Israel's recent round of tensions with Iran helped draw the U.S. and other allies back onside. The U.S. led an international coalition to rally to Israel's defense earlier this month when Iran launched its first-ever direct strike into Israeli territory, largely thwarting an onslaught that threatened to escalate fighting in the region .

The U.S. and Israel have been meeting periodically to discuss Israel's plans to evacuate civilians ahead of a military incursion into Rafah, as well as operational plans, said an Israeli security official. Last week, national security adviser Jake Sullivan met virtually with his Israeli counterpart and Israel's Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer, a Netanyahu confidant.

"The two sides agreed on the shared objective to see Hamas defeated in Rafah," the White House said after the meeting. "U.S. participants expressed concerns with various courses of action in Rafah, and Israeli participants agreed to take these concerns into account and to have further follow up discussions between experts," it said.

The U.S. has urged Israel to accomplish its objectives in Rafah through precision strikes and targeted raids, hoping to avoid both the high civilian toll and widespread destruction in the rest of the Gaza Strip. The Israeli Prime Minister's Office and Defense Ministry declined to comment on the bilateral talks.

Experts say Israel won't be able to destroy Hamas's four remaining battalions without invading Rafah, but that a more important long-term strategic goal might be to take control of the Philadelphi Corridor, the narrow, eight-mile strip of land spanning the border between Gaza and Egypt.

Israel has long said that smuggling tunnels below the border were critical in supplying weapons and other prohibited materiel to armed groups in Gaza including Hamas. Israel relinquished control over the corridor during its 2005 pullout from Gaza, and Israeli action in the border region is a sensitive issue which requires coordination with Egypt. Egypt has pushed back against Israeli overtures to establish a presence on the Rafah border line.

"What is important is establishing a real border that would cut off Hamas supply lines from Sinai into Gaza," said Ofer Shelah, a military analyst at Tel Aviv's Institute for National Security Studies.

Shelah said that a large military maneuver in Rafah would be problematic, for both its tunnel-laden battlefield and its humanitarian consequences.

As the last major city in Gaza that Israel hasn't invaded, Rafah has more than tripled in size as internally displaced people sought shelter there. Adjacent to border terminals from Egypt and Israel, it also rapidly developed into a hub for international organizations coordinating humanitarian response efforts.

Noha Saadawi, a 33-year-old mother of three children, said there is no infrastructure elsewhere in Gaza to support the more than one million displaced Palestinians. When she visited her home in Khan Younis to examine the damage earlier this month, she found it destroyed.

She said she expects the Israeli operation to last months and hopes to stay close to Rafah—in Al-Mawasi, along the Mediterranean coast. "We will stay in a tent because we don't have a home to return to," she said.

Abeer Ayyoub, Omar Abdel-Baqui and Summer Said contributed to this article.

Credit: By Carrie Keller-Lynn