The Is­raeli army on Mon­day or­dered tens of thou­sands of Pales­tini­ans in Gaza’s south­ern city of Rafah to start evac­u­at­ing from the area, sig­nalling that a long-promised ground in­va­sion there could be im­mi­nent.

The an­nounce­ment com­pli­cates last-ditch ef­forts by in­ter­na­tion­al me­di­a­tors, in­clud­ing the di­rec­tor of the CIA, to bro­ker a cease-fire. The mil­i­tant Hamas group and Qatar, a key me­di­a­tor, have warned that in­vad­ing Rafah — along the bor­der with Egypt — could de­rail the talks, and the Unit­ed States has re­peat­ed­ly urged Is­rael against the in­va­sion.

How­ev­er, Is­rael has de­scribed Rafah as the last sig­nif­i­cant Hamas strong­hold af­ter sev­en months of war, and its lead­ers have re­peat­ed­ly said the in­va­sion is nec­es­sary to de­feat the Is­lam­ic mil­i­tant group.

Lt. Col. Na­dav Shoshani, an army spokesman, said some 100,000 peo­ple were be­ing or­dered to move to a near­by Is­rael-de­clared hu­man­i­tar­i­an zone called Muwasi. He said Is­rael was prepar­ing a “lim­it­ed scope op­er­a­tion” and would not say whether this was the be­gin­ning of a broad­er in­va­sion of the city. But af­ter Oct. 7 and the un­prece­dent­ed at­tack on south­ern Is­rael by Hamas, Is­rael did not for­mal­ly an­nounce the launch of a ground in­va­sion that con­tin­ues to this day.

Overnight, De­fense Min­is­ter, Yoav Gal­lant, told U.S. Sec­re­tary of De­fense, Lloyd Austin that Is­rael had no choice but to act in Rafah. On Sun­day, Hamas car­ried out a dead­ly rock­et at­tack from the Rafah area that killed four Is­raeli sol­diers.

Shoshani said Is­rael pub­lished a map of the evac­u­a­tion area, and that or­ders were be­ing is­sued through air-dropped leaflets, text mes­sages and ra­dio broad­casts. He said Is­rael has ex­pand­ed hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid in­to Muwasi, in­clud­ing field hos­pi­tals, tents, food and wa­ter.

Is­rael’s army said on the so­cial plat­form X that it would act with “ex­treme force” against mil­i­tants, and urged the pop­u­la­tion to evac­u­ate im­me­di­ate­ly for their safe­ty.

Is­rael’s plan to in­vade Rafah has raised glob­al alarm be­cause of the po­ten­tial for harm to more than a mil­lion Pales­tin­ian civil­ians shel­ter­ing there.

About 1.4 mil­lion Pales­tini­ans — more than half of Gaza’s pop­u­la­tion — are jammed in­to the city and its sur­round­ings. Most of them fled their homes else­where in the ter­ri­to­ry to es­cape Is­rael’s on­slaught and now face an­oth­er wrench­ing move or the dan­ger of stay­ing un­der a new as­sault. They live in dense­ly packed tent camps, over­flow­ing U.N. shel­ters or crowd­ed apart­ments, and are de­pen­dent on in­ter­na­tion­al aid for food, with san­i­ta­tion sys­tems and med­ical fa­cil­i­ties in­fra­struc­ture crip­pled.

The U.N. agency that has helped mil­lions of Pales­tini­ans in Gaza and the West Bank for decades, known as UN­R­WA, warned Mon­day of the dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences of a Rafah of­fen­sive, in­clud­ing more civil­ian suf­fer­ing and deaths. The agency said it would not leave but stay in Rafah as long as pos­si­ble to con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing life­sav­ing as­sis­tance.

Egypt’s Rafah cross­ing, a main trans­fer point for aid go­ing in­to Gaza, lies in the evac­u­a­tion zone. The cross­ing re­mained open on Mon­day af­ter the Is­raeli or­der.

But even as the U.S., Egypt and Qatar have pushed for a cease-fire agree­ment, Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu re­peat­ed last week that the mil­i­tary would move on the city “with or with­out a deal” to achieve its goal of de­stroy­ing the Hamas mil­i­tant group.

On Mon­day, Ne­tanyahu ac­cused Hamas of “tor­pe­do­ing” the hostage deal and not budg­ing from its “ex­treme de­mands” while vow­ing to stop the mil­i­tants from re­tak­ing con­trol of Gaza. In a fiery speech Sun­day evening mark­ing the coun­try’s an­nu­al Holo­caust Memo­r­i­al Day, he re­ject­ed in­ter­na­tion­al pres­sure to halt the war, say­ing that “if Is­rael is forced to stand alone, Is­rael will stand alone.”

A Hamas of­fi­cial told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press that Is­rael is try­ing to pres­sure the group in­to mak­ing con­ces­sions on the cease-fire, but that it won’t change its de­mands. Hamas wants a full end to the war, with­draw­al of Is­raeli troops from Gaza and the even­tu­al re­con­struc­tion of the strip in ex­change for the Is­raeli hostages held by the mil­i­tants.

Shoshani would not say whether the up­com­ing Rafah op­er­a­tion is a re­sponse to Sun­day’s at­tack by Hamas that forced Is­rael’s key bor­der cross­ing for aid to close. He said it would not af­fect how much aid en­ters Gaza as oth­er cross­ing points re­main op­er­a­tional.

He wouldn’t com­ment, how­ev­er, on U.S. warn­ings not to in­vade and wasn’t clear on whether Mon­day’s evac­u­a­tion or­der was co­or­di­nat­ed with Egypt.

Egypt, a strate­gic part­ner of Is­rael, has said that an Is­raeli mil­i­tary seizure of the Gaza-Egypt bor­der — which is sup­posed to be de­mil­i­ta­rized — or any move to push Pales­tini­ans in­to Egypt would threat­en its four-decade-old peace treaty with Is­rael.

In Rafah, peo­ple re­ceived fly­ers Mon­day morn­ing in Ara­bic de­tail­ing which neigh­bour­hood blocks need­ed to leave and where hu­man­i­tar­i­an zones had ex­pand­ed to. The fly­ers said that aid ser­vices would spread from Deir al Bal­ah in the north to the cen­tre of Khan You­nis city in the mid­dle of the Gaza Strip.

“Any­one found near (mil­i­tant) or­ga­ni­za­tions en­dan­gers them­selves and their fam­i­ly mem­bers. For your safe­ty, the (army) urges you to evac­u­ate im­me­di­ate­ly to the ex­pand­ed hu­man­i­tar­i­an area”, it read.

Pales­tini­ans in Rafah said peo­ple gath­ered to dis­cuss their op­tions af­ter re­ceiv­ing the fly­ers. Most said they did not want to move alone and pre­ferred to trav­el in groups.

“So many peo­ple here are dis­placed and now they have to move again, but no one will stay here it’s not safe,” Nidal Alza­anin told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press by phone.

A fa­ther of five, Alza­anin works for an in­ter­na­tion­al aid group and was dis­placed to Rafah from Beit Ha­noun in the north at the start of the war. He said peo­ple are con­cerned since Is­raeli troops shot at Pales­tini­ans as they moved dur­ing pre­vi­ous evac­u­a­tion or­ders.

Alza­anin said he has packed his doc­u­ments and bags but will wait 24 hours to see what oth­ers do be­fore re­lo­cat­ing. He said he has a friend in Khan You­nis whom he hopes can pitch a tent for his fam­i­ly.

But some peo­ple say they’re too tired and fed up of months of dev­as­ta­tion to flee again.

Sa­har Abu Na­hel was dis­placed to Rafah with 20 of her fam­i­ly, her hus­band is be­ing held by Is­rael, and her son-in-law is miss­ing, she said.

“Where am I go­ing to go? I have no mon­ey or any­thing. I am se­ri­ous­ly tired as are (my) chil­dren,” she said wip­ing tears from her cheeks. “Maybe it's more ho­n­ourable for us to die. We are be­ing hu­mil­i­at­ed,” she said.

Mroue re­port­ed from Beirut.

JERUSALEM (AP) —