The plans for the IDF invasion of Rafah have been prepared for a while; the hold-up has been at the diplomatic level, with Egypt and the West.
Even back in December, the IDF held strong in its belief that it could handle the daunting task of evacuating some 1.4 million Palestinians who moved to Rafah, seeking refuge from the bombing in the north and center of the enclave, which means its current population is about six times greater than before the war.
What is daunting is that Cairo is terrified that the Israeli invasion will lead Palestinians to penetrate their border and cross into Egypt, while the US and the West are more concerned with the high death toll it will bring, and that many of these people have survived three moves: from northern Gaza to Khan Yunis to Rafah.
Will some of them simply refuse to leave, believing that there is no guarantee of safety somewhere else? Will some of Egypt’s or the West’s worst nightmares transpire, leading to a crisis and mid-invasion halt?
Rafah’s sixfold wartime population growth means that this is the densest evacuation the IDF will have to manage.
The key question is: What is the destination of the Palestinians, should they move?
There are three options: First, Al-Mawasi in the northeast, which already has hundreds of thousands of people living there; second, back to Khan Yunis in the north and northwest, where some of them just left; and third, further north to central Gaza.
Al-Mawasi might be the best option, but it probably cannot hold the population.
Khan Yunis is as close as al-Mawasi to Rafah. Its drawback is that it is the least stable area, because operative control was achieved by the IDF only last week.
Re-injecting a large civilian population into Khan Yunis could undermine further progress the IDF makes against Hamas since they could get caught in the middle of firefights and make it easier for Hamas to regain control.
It is expected that some Palestinians will be moved to parts of Khan Yunis, while some parts, where Hamas is still seen as a larger threat, will be kept free of civilians so the IDF can maneuver freely.
Central Gaza: A bit of a wildcard
Central Gaza is a bit of a wildcard; it is a fairly large area that has been subdued by the IDF for longer than Khan Yunis, but it will also take the IDF longer to move civilians there. This could also endanger more civilian lives, because it is a longer trip and will require more manpower.
The IDF also wants to keep civilians out of northern Gaza at all costs, both to run pilot programs without Hamas’s interference and as a continued large bargaining chip to hold over the terrorist organization.
In theory, the longer that there are no Palestinian civilians in the capital Gaza City, the more pressure Hamas faces. Bringing more civilians back to central Gaza also brings them closer to northern Gaza and risks more spillover.
So, after all of that, there may be no Rafah invasion.
The IDF instead may prepare, and even start moving some initial troops through Rafah, but there is the element of a hostage deal, which could halt everything and come in at the last second.
If the IDF goes into Rafah and takes over the Gazan side of the Philadelphi Corridor, Hamas would lose its last major remaining battalions, its last large city for hiding its leadership and human-shield hostages, and its only remaining way to rearm and smuggle in weapons from outside of Gaza.
Israel has been counting on the threat of invading Rafah as a chip to coerce Hamas into cutting a more reasonable deal. This same strategy led the IDF to not invade Khan Yunis until early December, hoping that a major fight and large-scale destruction of property would be unnecessary.
But Israel was surprised that Hamas Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar has persisted in his strategy that, as long as he continues to hold hostages, the government will bend to his terms.
The big final invasion was supposed to be Khan Yunis. Military and government officials said they would catch Sinwar in Hamas’s southern capital, and that he would not be ready to see the neighborhood where he grew up be laid waste.
The battle of Khan Yunis is now history, and Sinwar’s negotiating position has only softened slightly, as he still demands to remain in power in Gaza.
What if Hamas does not give up?
What if Hamas withstands a Rafah invasion? Will the IDF still move the population? What would an invasion look like then?
Likely quite similar to the battle of Khan Yunis; Rafah will be divided up into multiple sectors, and the IDF will go sector by sector, moving the population in rounds, raining down airstrikes, moving in with ground forces above ground, and eventually following with troops cutting through Hamas’s underground tunnel network.
This would be different from northern Gaza, where large masses of troops did not enter tunnels most of the time, but rather small engineering forces entered to explore and blow them up.
Taking control of Khan Yunis took around nine weeks. Rafah could take a similar time or longer, depending on whether it takes multiple weeks for the IDF to evacuate the civilians or whether it can be done in days or a week, as some IDF officials think is possible.
IDF sources point out that this time civilians will just need to leave temporary tents and few possessions, whereas in northern Gaza, they had to be persuaded to leave their homes and possessions.
On the other hand, the multiple evacuations have gained the IDF some credibility: that it means business about getting people to move and that it facilitates safe evacuation corridors.
Even if Rafah’s four Hamas battalions are taken apart in two to three months, part of the issue is less at this point finding all of the hostages, as much as it is that there is no political will to risk the hostage’s lives to fulfill the goal of killing Hamas’s leaders.
This means that Hamas could restart negotiations from a similar point in two to three months with even less patience with Israel from the West.
The hope is that the real threat of invading Rafah, combined with cutting off Hamas’s last rearming smuggling tunnels from Egypt and the elimination of the last large hiding area in Gaza, will finally bring Hamas to cut a more reasonable deal which the government can live with: such as expulsion of the Hamas leadership to Qatar in exchange for the hostages.