The United Nations has once again strongly warned the Israeli regime against going ahead with a ground invasion that it has threatened to carry out against the refugee-packed city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.

“This is an opportunity that cannot be missed, and a ground invasion in Rafah would be intolerable,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Monday.

Guterres discouraged the invasion “because of its devastating humanitarian consequences, and because of its destabilizing impact in the region.”

Also on Monday, the Israeli regime began forcibly evacuating around 100,000 Palestinians from the eastern part of Rafah amid the prospect of the invasion.

The city is hosting around 1.5 million Palestinians, who are taking refuge there after fleeing from the ravages of a devastating war that the regime has been waging against Gaza since October 7.

Nearly 35,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have died so far as a result of the war that the regime began following a retaliatory operation by Gaza’s resistance groups.

Guterres called on the Israeli regime and the Gaza-based resistance movement of Hamas, which are engaged in indirect negotiations aimed at agreeing on a potential ceasefire, “to go an extra mile” to reach a deal.

Earlier in the day, Hamas said it had agreed to a ceasefire proposal that has been put forward by Egyptian and Qatari mediators.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, however, said that the proposal was “far from Israel’s essential demands.”

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