Sadly, Benjamin Netanyahu is true — “sadly,” I say, as a result of he’s probably the most incompetent, corrupt and divisive Israeli prime minister ever, as many in Israel consider. However he’s proper that it’s essential for Israel to beat Rafah and destroy the Hamas battalions ensconced in that metropolis on the southern finish of the Gaza Strip, protected by a human protect of some 1.4 million residents and refugees from the north.
If this doesn’t occur, Hamas will survive to combat and homicide and rape one other day — and its chief, Yahya Sinwar, will emerge from his hiding place declaring victory. And he will probably be proper. For Palestinian-Israeli peace to have any probability, for regional stability and for the longer term welfare of Israel and Israelis, particularly these dwelling within the south of the nation, Hamas should be obliterated.
Whether or not Israel will truly assault Rafah or whether or not it may perform such an assault to what it considers a profitable conclusion continues to be up within the air. This week, the Biden administration strongly cautioned towards a full-scale invasion of Rafah, saying it may very well be enormously dangerous to civilians and in the end harm Israel’s safety. Mr. Netanyahu mentioned on Monday {that a} date for an invasion had been set, though he didn’t specify what it was.
In fact, there are formidable causes for Israel to chorus from invading Rafah. First, above all, is that human protect. Assaulting Rafah will inevitably trigger many civilian casualties, regardless of assurances by Israel that it’ll transfer the civilians out of hurt’s means earlier than launching the offensive. The civilian toll within the potential Rafah assault will come on prime of the estimated 33,000 lifeless cited by the Hamas-controlled Gaza Well being Ministry (which quantity contains the greater than 12,000 Hamas fighters the Israeli navy claims to have killed these previous six months). A lot of these had been killed in floor offensives in Gaza Metropolis and Khan Younis to the north.
The extra civilian casualties and the attendant additional disruption of humanitarian support by the Egypt-Gaza border will ratchet up condemnation of Israel’s conduct by its Western allies, led by the US. The specter of worldwide sanctions is already on the desk.
Second, for months Egypt has been telling Israel to remain out of Rafah. Cairo fears that an Israeli assault will spill over into the Sinai Peninsula and lead to Palestinians pouring into Egypt. That would engender each a recent humanitarian disaster and a political problem, given Hamas’s kinship with Egypt’s highly effective, although now banned, Muslim Brotherhood motion. Egypt has hinted that such an Israeli marketing campaign may even subvert the 45-year-old Israel-Egypt peace treaty, seen by the Israeli authorities as a basis stone of its nationwide safety.
Furthermore, any marketing campaign in Rafah, just like the Israeli navy’s earlier war-making in Khan Younis, is sure to be protracted, given the expansive Hamas tunnel system beneath its streets and the care the Israeli forces will most certainly take due to the potential presence within the tunnels of Israeli hostages from the Oct. 7 Hamas assault on southern Israel.
Which brings us to Israeli public opinion. The beginning of a Rafah offensive could in itself delay by months, if not years, a cope with Hamas to get some or the entire hostages again.
The current mass demonstrations on Israel’s streets calling alternatively for such a deal or for Mr. Netanyahu’s ouster may flip violent and anarchic. And the possible assault on Rafah may require calling up a lot of Israeli reservists who had been solely lately launched from service in Gaza, alongside the border with Lebanon or within the West Financial institution. Certainly, the confluence of those two points — the hostages and extra, burdensome reserve service — may halt the offensive in mid-stride and precipitate a disaster within the authorities coalition.
Lastly, the possible offensive — with its promise of the ultimate destruction of Hamas — may even set off a full-scale battle with Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which till now has restricted itself to harrying Israel’s northern border communities and navy positions. And an Israel-Hezbollah battle may herald a fair wider regional battle, together with a direct Israel-Iran conflict, which the Biden administration has been at pains to avert since Oct. 7, lest the US too be sucked into the maelstrom.
But, regardless of these highly effective causes to face down, Israel should take Rafah if it needs to demolish Hamas as a navy and governing group. And for Israel, that potential end result outweighs the various dangers.
If Hamas emerges from this battle accountable for Rafah, the place 1000’s of its fighters are believed to stay, and the southern quarter of Gaza, it may regularly rearm by the tunnels connecting the Strip and Sinai, and shortly mission its energy northward to embody most or the entire Strip, many analysts consider.
Above all, an Israeli failure to take Rafah and smash Hamas’s final organized navy formations and its governing buildings will paint Israel, in its enemies’ eyes, as a weak, defeated polity, simple prey for the following potential assailant. Paradoxically, the spectacle of Israeli weak spot — as a lot as a Rafah offensive — may tempt Hezbollah to gamble on a full-scale battle.
Any chance of overseas troops (Emirati or Saudi) or Palestinian Authority/Fatah police changing the Israelis within the bulk of the Gaza Strip will disappear, given the chance that these troops could be denounced and attacked by Hamas as Israel’s brokers.
Down the highway, a resurrected Hamas will once more threaten, and possibly assault, southern Israel’s border communities. Many of the residents of these communities have been inside exiles since Oct. 7 alongside the 70,000 or so inhabitants of northern Israel’s border communities displaced by Hezbollah rockets for the reason that battle started.
The Oct. 7 Hamas incursion has raised a giant query mark over Zionism itself. Zionism got here into this world some 140 years in the past to finish the two,000 years of Jewish humiliation and oppression at gentile palms and to supply the Jews, ultimately, with a haven.
To now enable the badly mauled Hamas to emerge victorious will underline Zionism’s essential failure. And critics within the Arab and Muslim world of creating peace with Israel — Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco have achieved so — could be emboldened to reject such ties.
100 or so years of battle with Arab nations and of terrorism, culminating within the Hamas brutality of Oct. 7, have demonstrated that Israel, definitely for the second, will be thought-about the least protected place on earth for Jews. Invading Rafah is important to eliminating Hamas and restoring that security. You don’t have to love Benjamin Netanyahu to see that.
Benny Morris is a professor emeritus of Center Jap historical past at Ben-Gurion College and the writer of “1948: A Historical past of the First Arab-Israeli Conflict.”
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