RAFAH (Palestinian Territories): Israel’s prime minister on Wednesday insisted there was no “humanitarian catastrophe” in Rafah as he announced nearly 500,000 people had been evacuated from the south Gaza city amid intense fighting.

It came as Palestinians commemorated the 76th anniversary of the “Nakba”, when around 760,000 Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes during the 1948 wartime creation of Israel.

Israeli forces have battled and bombed Hamas fighters around Gaza’s far-southern city of Rafah, but clashes have also flared again in northern and central areas which Israeli troops first entered months ago.

The upsurge in urban combat in besieged Gaza has fuelled US warnings that Israel risks being bogged down in a counterinsurgency operation for years.

But despite previous threats by US President Joe Biden to withhold some arms deliveries over Netanyahu’s insistence on attacking Rafah, his administration informed Congress on Tuesday of a new $1 billion weapons package for Israel, official sources told AFP.

The European Union urged Israel to end its military operation in Rafah “immediately”, warning that failure to do so would “inevitably put a heavy strain” on ties with the bloc.

But even as he announced that hundreds of thousands had been “evacuated”, Netanyahu insisted there was no humanitarian crisis in Rafah.

“Our responsible efforts are bearing fruit. So far, in Rafah, close to half a million people have been evacuated from the combat zones. The humanitarian catastrophe that was spoken about did not materialise, nor will it,” the premier said in a statement.

The sight of desperate families carrying their scant belongings through the ruins of war-scarred cities has evoked for many the events of the 1948 Nakba which translates from Arabic as “catastrophe”.

Hamas declared in a Nakba Day statement that “the ongoing suffering of millions of refugees inside Palestine and in the diaspora is directly attributed to the Zionist occupation”.

The Islamist militant group said “their legitimate right to return to their homes from which they were displaced cannot be compromised or relinquished”.

One displaced Gaza man, Mohammed al-Farra, whose family fled their home in Khan Yunis for the coastal area of Al-Mawasi, said: “Our ‘Nakba’... is the worst ever.

“It is much harder than the Nakba of 1948.”

Thousands marched to mark the day in cities across the Israeli-occupied West Bank, waving Palestinian flags, wearing keffiyeh scarves and holding up symbolic keys as reminders of long-lost family homes.

Netanyahu has vowed to destroy Hamas and bring home the hostages still held in Gaza.