Rafah was never the key to resolving the war and peace issues between the Israeli government, the IDF, Hamas, and the US.
But it has evolved, in some ways by accident, into being the issue which has now brought every conflict between the many sides to this war to the forefront.
On Sunday, The Washington Post reported that the US is trying to offer more accurate locations of where Hamas’s leaders are in order to convince Israel not to expand Rafah into a fuller invasion.
To date, the IDF has only carried out a very limited operation in Rafah, but it has started to move toward a medium size operation which could lead to evacuating 300,000 more out of somewhere between 800,000 to one million Palestinian civilians.
There is no question that the leak to The Post was planted to try to undermine any Israeli plan to expand the Rafah operation.
Put concisely: why would Israel need to do a large operation if US intelligence can help it nab the Hamas ringleaders like Gaza Chief Yahya Sinwar more quickly?
Questions rising over Rafah operation
It is not at all clear whether a larger operation in Rafah is worth the cost at this point given US and Egyptian opposition and Israel’s ongoing inability to corner Sinwar on one hand, balanced against the need to eliminate Hamas’s remaining battalions on the other hand.
And the US has superior intelligence and technology in parts of the region and certainly globally.
Unfortunately, it is unlikely that Washington has better intelligence than Israel on where Sinwar is hiding. If it did, presumably it would have shared that information long ago in order to end the war much sooner.
Rather, the leak appears designed for public relations to try to corner Israel into looking unreasonable if it wants to continue into Rafah.
The same is true about the alleged debate between Israel and the US over whether it will take weeks (Israel) or months (the US) to evacuate civilians from Gaza.
Top Israeli sources have said that really the disagreement is about whether to build all of the tents for evacuees before or after they evacuate.
The US wants makeshift new neighborhoods put up before evacuation.
According to the IDF, putting up tents before the evacuation could lead to Hamas destroying them whereas even Hamas will not brazenly attack tents once Palestinian civilians have occupied them.
The IDF version of evacuation does not envisage starvation, but the American version goes beyond this to to creating a modicum of stability which the evacuees will enjoy beyond not starving or dying.
This is more about public relations than the laws of war and is more about American anger at the Jewish state for not only killing so many Gazans (even Israeli statistics acknowledge 16,000-20,000 civilian deaths), but also for destroying so much neighborhood infrastructure – making rebuilding that much harder.
The US State Department report issued on Friday and statements by Secretary of State Anthony Blinken in interviews on Sunday put a gun to Israel’s head on claims of war crimes.
On one hand, there was no formal declaration that Israel has committed war crimes. On the other hand, the State Department and Blinken repeat that it is reasonable to assume from the number of dead civilians that some of Israel’s attacks were illegal. They make it clear that if Israel goes into Rafah and too many civilians (according to US judgment) die, one of the penalties will be a formal declaration from Washington that Israel has committed war crimes.
Along with Biden’s threat to hold back offensive weapons from Israel if it goes into Rafah in a larger way, the US has hit Israel with a one-two punch.
This is the largest “stick” Biden has held over Netanyahu after many rounds in which Washington felt that Jerusalem ignored its suggestions and veiled threats which were not followed with real world severe consequences.
Combine it with the “carrot” of new intelligence the US allegedly has on Sinwar and you have a carefully rolled out American strategy to block Netanyahu from a larger Rafah operation.
Is it that Rafah is more important than Khan Yunis or Gaza City? There were around as many civilians in Gaza City as in Rafah.
Rafah is somewhat more serious because more than any other area in the Strip it is populated by civilians evacuated from past operations and because it is close to Egypt, from which much of the international aid enters Gaza.
Really, this is about the US having lost patience with promises it feels Israel made in the past and then broke. This is not about international law, but about Biden wanting a “return” on six months of “investing” militarily and diplomatically in Israel’s war, despite the heavy criticism he took for providing that support.
Likewise, the IDF and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant have lost patience with Netanyahu as Rafah comes into play.
Most of the war was done by early February. Very little of strategic value has happened for the last three months, which the IDF and Gallant view as Netanyahu having squandered because he refused to approve any realistic plan for some new party to manage Gaza.
Now that the US and Egypt are threatening Israel on a whole new level at the same time as Netanyahu is demanding a new invasion of Rafah, they are beyond impatient as they push Netanyahu to finally make the political decisions he must.
At the precise moment the Rafah invasion has started, the IDF finds to its consternation that it has been compelled to send two additional divisions back into Jabalya and Zeitun to put down Hamas again, after having beaten its forces in those areas in January.
Having to redo its work in Jabalya and Zeitoun, in part because Netanyahu did not approve a new Gaza manager has led the IDF and Gallant to confront Netanyahu as the Rafah front opens up.
So while Rafah itself is certainly a potential crisis point, much of the current crisis has more to do with all of the conflicts over the past seven months between Netanyahu, the US, and the Israeli defense establishment coming to a head all at the same time.