Why have all eyes been on Rafah? We have been led to believe that the intense focus on a town the size of Rochdale in southern Gaza derives from purely humanitarian concerns, as if any Israeli operation there would trigger a civilian catastrophe on the scale of Rwanda or Darfur. Take a closer look, though, and this narrative quickly falls apart.
The Israeli operation taking place as I write is remarkable. According to Colonel Richard Kemp, the former commander of British forces who is closely following the conflict in Gaza, the current casualty ratio in Rafah is about one civilian for every ten combatants killed, which is several orders of magnitude more humane than any conflict in history. This was achieved after Israel successfully evacuated a million displaced people from the town, despite the American-led international community wailing for months that such a move was impossible. What is going on?
In all likelihood, the fall of Rafah will mean the end of Hamas as a meaningful fighting force
One giveaway is the behaviour of Egypt. By maintaining a discreet silence for most of the war, it has ducked difficult questions about the way it has kept its border sealed to Gazan refugees (unless they are able to pay $5,000 (£3,900) a head). With all eyes on Israel, Cairo has also managed to avoid scrutiny over the tunnels burrowing from its sovereign territory into Rafah, which for years have been the main conduit through which Hamas has received its arms. Egyptian military elites have enriched themselves by facilitating this trade, quietly keeping Hamas’s lifeline open while supposedly maintaining security cooperation with Israel, with which they have signed a peace agreement.
So far, Israeli forces have uncovered and destroyed about 20 such tunnels, one every 650 yards along the border. Such an embarrassing discovery – and the end of years of lucrative backhanders – explains why the looming Israeli operation caused Egypt to panic. In a last-ditch attempt to head it off, Cairo announced last month that it would formally join South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice that accuses the Jewish state of genocide. This was laughably transparent. If the Egyptian leaders cared about their Palestinian brothers, surely they would consider allowing some refugees into a humanitarian zone in their territory? And if they cared about human rights, surely their own country would not be ruled by way of political repression, execution, widespread torture and forced eviction? By comparison, Israel looks like Switzerland.
Economically, Egypt is fast becoming a basket case, with the Houthi attacks in the Red Sea restricting the influx of foreign funds. To make matters worse, there is a burgeoning food security crisis, the combined result of Covid lockdowns, the Ukraine war, mounting debt, dwindling currency reserves and collapsing exchange rates. The country also faces deep problems with Islamism. According to the Egyptian Family Health Survey, 86 per cent of married women between 15 and 49 have suffered female genital mutilation. And when it comes to corruption, Egypt ranks 108th out of 180 countries, according to Transparency International, neck-and-neck with Sierra Leone. This is the country that is so concerned about a supposed Israeli ‘genocide’.
Last month, Egypt closed the border crossing into Rafah, preventing the influx of aid and exacerbating deprivation in the strip. This was a crude attempt to pile more pressure onto Israel as it prepared to enter the contested town. Revealingly, it was based on the correct assumption that the international community would blame only one country for the dwindling aid, and not the country responsible.
In all likelihood, the fall of Rafah will mean the end of Hamas as a meaningful fighting force. Its last battalions – apart from those fighting the IDF in a little-reported battle in Jabalia, further north – are holed up there for the final showdown, and the destruction of the Egyptian tunnels along the border will be the nail in the coffin. How many people around the world are cheering with their whole chests? The way in which the West has mobilised its every resource to prevent such an achievement, from diplomacy to rallies and – let’s call it what it is – propaganda, is nothing short of disgraceful. We have been continually subjected to the facile arguments that Hamas cannot be destroyed because it is an idea (so was Nazism), or that the only way to destroy Hamas is to give the Palestinians a state (no, it’s defeating the group in the battle). It has been transparent, but hugely effective in choking off support for the Middle East’s sole democracy as it confronts the enemies that are coming for us all.
With war raging, the population of Rafah was swelled by 1.4 million displaced people taking shelter from fighting in the north. Rather than help Israel solve this problem, the Americans insisted publicly for months that it would be impossible to evacuate them all from the town. To avoid a humanitarian catastrophe, the Biden administration said, Rafah must be left untouched. Kamala Harris assured journalists that she had ‘studied the maps’ and concluded that ‘there’s nowhere for those folks to go’. On the phone to Benjamin Netanyahu, the President delivered what is fast becoming his catchphrase: ‘Don’t.’
In response, however, Israel did. In a mere ten days, the IDF successfully evacuated a million Palestinians to an ‘expanded humanitarian area’ stretching from al-Mawasi, northwest of the town, to the southern city of Khan Younis and the central Deir al-Balah. (The civilians were clearly confident that they would receive adequate aid, given the quantities now pouring into the strip.) Israeli troops then commenced the military operation, very slowly and carefully, relying on lessons learned from the early phase of the war, with limited air support and causing historically low civilian casualties. One by one, Hamas cells and terror tunnels have been neutralised. Meanwhile, the White House’s much-trumpeted humanitarian pier was wrecked by inclement weather, another symbol of American incompetence.
Put all this together and the conclusion is clear. Every group with vested interests in the survival of Hamas – from fanatically Israelophobic NGOs and UN agencies to corrupt Middle Eastern leaders and western elites – has been using the language of humanitarian concern to frustrate an Israeli victory.
Hamas is on its way out. But its propagandists are fighting to the last. Last week, the IDF fired two small, 37lb munitions into a compound a mile from the humanitarian safe zone, killing two senior enemy commanders in a precision strike. This was followed by a secondary explosion 200 yards away, probably one of Hamas’s concealed weapons caches, sparking a fire that claimed 45 lives. Cue huge international outrage, the threat of EU sanctions and even more intense pressure on Israel to leave Rafah alone. ‘All eyes on Rafah’, the subsequent internet meme which was shared more than 47 million times, demanded an end to the operation. The truth – that this was an entirely justifiable strike in an entirely justifiable war – was irrelevant. The important thing was to stop the IDF.
Biden’s ceasefire proposal distinguishes itself by leaving Rafah untouched and dodging the question of destroying Hamas. And while it emphasises a two-state solution, it fails to address the dangerous radicalisation of the Palestinian public. According to the latest figures from the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research, 71 per cent both on the West Bank and in Gaza back the October 7 atrocities. Doesn’t this obvious hurdle to a political settlement warrant at least a sentence?
The fact that states like Egypt find it so easy to be taken seriously as humanitarian voices provides a mirror to patronising western myopia, which pins all blame on the best country in the region and none of the blame on the worst. In its short history, when it comes to war-fighting, Israel has repeatedly been held back from victory. Not this time.
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