Olivia Allery, News Editor

On Feb. 11, the National Football League (NFL) hosted the 58th annual Super Bowl football game in Las Vegas. According to Sporting News, the San Francisco 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs drew a total of 123.4 million viewers to the game, making it the highest viewed Super Bowl in history. According to CNN, on Super Bowl Sunday while many in the U.S. prepared and started to tune into the game, Pres. Joe Biden and Pres. Benjamin Netanyahu  of Israel called to discuss Israel’s continuous deadly attacks in Gaza, particularly in Netanyahu’s plan to attack the city of Rafah.

According to AP News, the southern Gazan city of Rafah has nearly quintupled its population as it was the last place spared from Israel’s attacks, and promised by Israel to be safe passage for civilians from the Israeli Defense Forces’ (IDF) quest to eradicate Hamas. The city of Rafah has been housing over 1.5 million Palestinian refugees, some in apartments but most in tents lining the streets. According to the Guardian, on Feb. 9, Netanyahu instructed the IDF to draw up plans for an evacuation of Rafah into neighboring Egypt, as they believed that attacking the city could be the last effort to defeat Hamas and save Israeli hostages. This led to widespread panic within Rafah and push back from Egypt, as Israel’s plan to evacuate Palestinians would break the peace agreement between the two countries. On Feb. 10, Israel then led three airstrike attacks in Rafah that killed around 44 people. 

This initial attack in Rafah raised grave concern, first for the UN Ambassador to the U.S. Linda Thomas-Greenfield and then with President Biden, due to the dire humanitarian aid needed for refugees and Rafah being the last city left for the people of Palestine to go. According to NPR, this is the first time the US has opposed an Israeli attack since the start of the genocidal war in Oct. 2023. In the Feb. 11 call between Biden and Netanyahu, Biden stated in a quote from NPR, “a military operation in Rafah should not proceed without a credible and executable plan for ensuring the safety of and support for the more than one million people sheltering there.”

After this 45-minute call, Netanyahu then stated in an interview with ABC News that he believed Biden’s comments were “over the top” and believes that Israel has “responded in a way that goes after the terrorist and tries to minimize the civilian population.” 

According to CNN, the following day on Feb. 12, the IDF came for Rafah in the early morning, in what was claimed to be an operation to secure two hostages, Fernando Simon Marman and Louis Har. In this effort, the IDF continued their attack with both ground and airstrikes that left over 100 Palestinian civilians dead. According to AP News, on Feb. 15, Nasser Hospital in the city of Khan-Younis, one of the biggest complexes for treating wounded Palestinians, was attacked by the IDF after “credible intelligence” told them Israeli hostages were inside, which forced doctors and wounded patients to evacuate and left one dead and several wounded. There does not seem to be an end in sight to the war, as the IDF still continues to try and find more hostages, leaving a violent pattern in their wake.