Israeli attacks on Rafah: What we know

The long-threatened Israeli invasion of Rafah appears imminent.

Israel carried out airstrikes on Monday on the southern Palestinian city, which is currently home to about 1.4 million people displaced during Israel’s war on Gaza. This came a day after at least 100,000 Palestinians were ordered to evacuate the eastern part of the city, leading to scenes of families fleeing north to areas badly damaged by nearly eight months of fighting. The combination of the two events – plus a vote by Israel’s War Cabinet on Monday to move forward with the operation – suggests a major operation could be on the cards.

Israel claims four Hamas battalions operate from the southern city. Rafah is also one of the few places in Gaza not destroyed by Israeli forces and is the site of two border crossings – Critical routes for the humanitarian aid that the people of Gaza so urgently need.

This all happened as representatives of Hamas, Israel, Egypt, Qatar and the US gathered in Cairo to discuss the terms of a possible ceasefire. Hamas reportedly agreed to a proposal from Qatari and Egyptian officials on Monday. Israel has rejected this plan, saying that the agreement does not comply with the proposal drawn up by Israeli and US negotiators.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly warned that Israel would attack Rafah, despite warnings from the U.S. not to do so without a clear and credible plan to protect civilians – which the U.S. had not yet seen at a news conference on Monday, Matthew said Miller, State Department spokesman.

In view of the destruction of Gaza and the shocking number of deaths – at least 34,500, including around 14,000 children – aid groups and International organizations such as the UN warn that an invasion could have catastrophic consequences due to the large crowds there and cut off important aid routes. However, as of Monday evening, Netanyahu’s government appeared committed to its maximalist military goal of destroying Hamas.

Israel has consolidated operational control over large parts of the Gaza Strip, including operations that destroyed and captured major cities such as Khan Younis and Gaza City. Rafah has become a focal point of the war in recent months.

Given Israel’s belief that many of Hamas’s remaining fighters live there, the country’s right wing has loudly called for an invasion there as a necessary step toward “total victory,” and Netanyahu has described it as an existential struggle. But given Israel’s efforts to consolidate its control over the north for the coming months or years, the possibility of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) capturing Rafah raises serious questions about the future of Gaza after the war.

And since the vast majority of Gaza’s population is concentrated there (and the city serves as the territory’s main aid hub), a large-scale operation spells short-term humanitarian disaster.

What is happening in Rafah?

On Monday, the Prime Minister’s Office Posted on X“The War Cabinet has unanimously decided that Israel will continue the operation in Rafah to exert military pressure on Hamas to promote the release of our hostages and the other objectives of the war.” while negotiations continue a possible ceasefire.

This announcement was followed by IDF spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari Post on X“IDF troops are now targeting and operating against targets of the terrorist organization Hamas in eastern Rafah on Monday evening local time.” According to the Jerusalem Post, Hagari said that an air operation began on Monday in preparation for a ground offensive.

Israeli forces dropped leaflets on Sunday evening to people in East Rafah, warning them to move to a safe zone; However, the operation in the east of Rafah only began after a few hours later, said Hagari.

The tactic is reminiscent of tactics used early in the war, when the military urged people to leave the northern Gaza Strip, giving them 24 hours to leave the area before a planned operation (Israel ultimately delayed the attack ). There are currently few details about what exactly this operation entails – and how many of the 100,000 people ordered to evacuate the area made it to areas near Khan Younis, a town about 5 miles away, before the operation began north of Rafah.

Rafah was intended to be a safe zone for the approximately 1.7 million people who are now seeking refuge there. Israeli operations in northern and central Gaza have razed about 70 percent of the region’s housing, Abdallah al-Dardari, director of the regional office for Arab states at the U.N. Development Program, said in a news conference last week.

Israel has carried out repeated attacks against Rafah despite the risk to civilians due to its population density, including one on Sunday in retaliation for a Hamas rocket attack on the Kerem Shalom border crossing that killed four Israeli soldiers and reportedly may have contributed to the to speed up Israel’s timetable for the Rafah operation by stoking fears about Hamas’ capabilities. According to Palestinian health authorities, at least 19 people were killed in the Israeli attacks.

The most immediate concern of any operation is humanitarian. Military engagement poses a major risk to the people of Rafah, and the United Nations warned on Friday that hundreds of thousands of people would be in “imminent danger of death” if an invasion occurs. Humanitarian supplies such as food, fuel, clean water and medical aid are already in short supply, and some medical aid organizations such as MedGlobal have decided to suspend their operations in light of the operation.

“There is no safe place: for over six months, Israel has been routinely killing civilians and aid workers, including in clearly marked ‘safe zones’ and ‘escape routes,'” Abby Maxman, president and CEO of OxFam America, said in a statement on Monday. “The idea that the 100,000 civilians evacuated by Israel will be safe and secure is simply unbelievable.”

It is also unclear how safe the evacuation zones are. For example, in February Israel attacked al-Mawasi, a supposedly humanitarian zone, when an IDF tank fired on a house there, killing the wife and daughter-in-law of a worker with the medical aid group Doctors Without Borders (MSF).

“Six other people were injured, five of whom were women or children,” the group said in a press release. “Bullets were also fired at the clearly marked MSF building, hitting the entrance gate, the outside of the building and the interior of the ground floor.” (The Israeli army told France 24 it had fired “at a building where terrorist activities are taking place “.)

What are Israel’s goals in Rafah?

The alleged aim of the operation is to pursue four Hamas battalions that the government says are based in Rafah. Israel has made various claims about the number of militants its forces have killed during the war on Gaza, putting the number at up to 12,000. Hamas does not disclose the number of its fighters killed.

Although Israel claims that there are still six Hamas battalions – the four in Rafah and two in the central Gaza Strip – it is difficult to assess whether this is true.

“The official government line is that this is the last bastion of Hamas – whatever remains of its battalions,” Tahani Mustafa, senior Palestine analyst at the International Crisis Group, told Vox. “But then there are military leaks that come to light, with some members of the Israeli military saying, ‘Actually, Israel has been completely unsuccessful in destroying a single battalion,’ and Hamas’s 24, 25 battalions assume that this is always the case is still the case.” very intact.”

“The consensus is that Hamas still has at least half of its fighters deployed,” Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Vox.

Israel has said its goal is the political and military destruction of Hamas. For this reason, even in the event of a ceasefire and an agreement to release the hostages still held by Hamas after its October 7 attack, Israel would have failed to achieve its objectives, potentially opening the door to further action in Rafah and Gaza more broadly left open.

Even a more limited invasion of Rafah – if it is even possible – carries some political risks, including the possibility that Egypt could reverse a decades-long peace agreement with Israel, as it threatened in February if Israel invaded the city.

France also warned of an invasion; The State Department said the forcible removal of people from Rafah would constitute a war crime. The US has also warned Israel against launching an invasion without a plan to protect civilians, but so far there has been no strong condemnation from the Biden administration nor a threat of US military aid to Israel.

What about the ceasefire process?

Israel and Hamas have not agreed to a ceasefire since November, when around 105 hostages and 240 Palestinian prisoners held in Israel returned after a week-long pause in hostilities.

The latest round of peace talks has stalled over the past two months because of fundamental disagreements over negotiating positions.

“Unfortunately, we find ourselves in a situation where the demands of both sides are mutually exclusive,” Mustafa said. “There is Hamas, which insists on a complete cessation of hostilities and a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, which is about a fifth of its size before October 7th. It calls for the return of people from the south back to the north.”

According to Reuters, Hamas negotiators agreed on a three-phase plan consisting of two six-week ceasefire periods during which Hamas would release Israeli hostages in return for a gradual military withdrawal and the release of Palestinian prisoners. The third phase would include implementing a reconstruction plan in Gaza and ending the years-long blockade of the territory.

Now the Israeli leadership has said it is using the Rafah offensive as a pressure tactic – a gradual operation to pressure Hamas into accepting its demands for a ceasefire.

Each side has blamed the other for the failure to reach an agreement, but essentially, as Mustafa said, the positions of both sides boil down to this: end the war and continue fighting, which cannot coexist.

Netanyahu and the Israeli public view this as a multi-year war, Alterman said. “They don’t want this to end so quickly because they want to eliminate the possibility of October 7th ever happening again,” he said. “Whether there is a military way there or not is another question.”