Two Israeli analysts unanimously agreed today, Friday, May 3, 2024, that invading the city of Rafah and carrying out a military operation there will not change the status of the Gaza war, at a time when Israel is suffering from a huge decrease in its standing in international public opinion.
According to Nahum Barnea, a political analyst in Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, the invasion of Rafah may lead to the “dismantling” of the four Hamas brigades that Israel claims are present in Rafah. But the leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Yahya Sinwar, “will not necessarily disappear. There is doubt if he is present in Rafah at all.”
Barnea expected that “the kidnapped persons, living and dead, were distributed in several places and under the control of several parties,” but he warned that “the possibility that the fire in Rafah will lead to their death is higher than the possibility of their rescue.”
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He pointed out an even more important aspect. “The Israeli army entered the northern Gaza Strip, and the camps in the central Gaza Strip and Khan Yunis, with all its firepower, in the air and on land. This military operation cannot be repeated in Rafah, not at a time when Israel is suffering from a huge decrease in its standing in international public opinion.”
He added, “We do not have the surplus to bear more pictures of scenes of mass murder and destruction; the pile of arrest warrants on the prosecutor’s table at the International Criminal Court in The Hague is piling up; more governments and commercial companies are threatening sanctions and severing ties with Israel. Most importantly, most families have no left to live.” The kidnapped people are a drop of willingness to risk the lives of their loved ones, and after the protests of the families, protests will come from the families of the soldiers, who will ask “what are they being killed for there” in the Gaza Strip.
Barnea quoted a source in the security apparatus as saying, “In the end, Rafah will be a showcase for boasting, something that will allow right-wing broadcasters to shout, ‘We occupied, we won, we achieved the goals of the war without actually achieving them.’ A TV reporter will stand on top of a pile of rubble and announce: We seized the shoe.” The second is for Sinwar, and Rafah is the traditional Israeli trick.”
According to Barnea, “If Sinwar’s answer (to the prisoner exchange and truce proposal) is negative, the process of evacuating the population from Rafah will begin within days, and then it will be difficult to stop the entry (i.e., the invasion) of Rafah. They estimate in Israel that Sinwar will prefer to say ‘Yes,’ But he reiterates his demand for an Israeli pledge, backed by international guarantees, not to resume the fighting. Sinwar has his own logic, and when Israeli leaders repeat their pledge to their voters that they will resume the war and assassinate him, he has no choice but to believe them.
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For his part, the military analyst in the newspaper “Haaretz”, Amos Harel, considered that “the Israeli army is capable of occupying Rafah. The question is what it will achieve by occupying it,” but he pointed out that the Minister of Defense, Yoav Galant, and the Chief of Staff of the Army, Herzi Halevy, “They told Netanyahu that the Rafah invasion would cause damage to the Hamas brigades and the movement’s infrastructure, but would not lead to a decisive victory over Hamas, contrary to his promises to the public.”
Galant and Halevy added, according to Harel, that “Hamas will restore its military and authoritarian capabilities in other areas in the Strip. After several months of the occupation of Rafah, we will return to the starting point. Hamas is damaged, but active, from another authoritarian alternative in the Strip.” Harel pointed out, “This is why the army proposes to try to advance a deal and only after that prepare for the possibility of occupying Rafah.”
He pointed out, “In the absence of a deal, and in the wake of American opposition, it is possible that the military operation in Rafah will be more limited than it is thought. The Israeli army can push a portion of the population out of Rafah, control the outskirts of the city, and bomb it from the outside, without immediately attacking a complete occupation.” A military operation like this will not be without human losses as well. In addition to many Palestinian deaths, the lives of soldiers will be lost. It has become absolutely clear that expanding this military operation will pose a threat to the lives of kidnapped persons, some of whom are detained in Rafah. In all previous attacks by the Israeli army, kidnapped persons were killed “.
