North Macedonia (Brussels Morning Newspaper), Rafah sits on the borders of both Israel and Egypt. It is the main traffic corridor for both humanitarian aid and military materiel for Hamas. About 50% of the fighting force of Hamas has relocated to Rafah. The city sits atop a hypercomplex network of tunnels of all kinds. Only a few days ago, Hamas launched a rocket attack from Rafah on Israeli armed forces who were guarding the truck terminal there.
Israel is committed to the unrealistic goal of eradicating Hamas and assassinating its top military leaders who are hiding in Rafah, surrounded by live hostages as human shields.
Israel is likely to take Rafah one neighborhood at a time, making it easier to move the civilian population out of harm’s way. About 700,000 of the Palestinians currently in the city are refugees from north and central Gaza and Israel will probably allow them to return to what is left of their homes.
Even so, the logistical challenge of providing hundreds of thousands of civilians with protection, food, and shelter is unlikely to be tackled successfully. Many civilians are bound to end up as collateral damage.
But Israel is unlikely to pay heed to the exhortations of the EU, or even to the threats and pressures of the Biden administration, for two reasons:
First, Hamas have threatened to repeat the October 7 atrocities, slaughter, and rape of Israeli civilians. Israel now regards Hamas and Iran as existential threats. The US and the EU have only fought distant enemies, they have never faced an existential threat. Israel is right to ignore them both.
The second reason is Netanyahu’s political survival and his freedom (he faces severe criminal charges in multiple cases). both depends on accomplishing the goals of the war or on dragging it out. Also, the longer the war, the more likely people are to recover from the traumatic shock of the Hamas massacres and vote for Netanyahu. He is now a hostage of Israel’s far-right political parties.
The United States, the Arab world, and the international community want to secure a permanent ceasefire, each for their own reasons. So do Hamas who wish to regroup, rearm, regain governance of Gaza, and live to attack Israel another time. Israel wants to continue the fighting, punctuated as it is by weeks of truce and swaps of Israeli hostages versus Palestinian prisoners.
These goals are incompatible and, therefore, even if such a truce is agreed on, it is very likely to be breached and lead to renewed fighting.
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