War on Gaza: Why Israel will never ‘finish the job’
Smoke billows over Rafah, Gaza, after Israeli bombing on 13 February 2024
David Hearst writes in Middle East Eye on 19 February 2024:
The widely trumpeted determination of the Israeli war cabinet to occupy Rafah, where 1.4 million Palestinians forcibly ejected from the north and centre of Gaza are sheltering, masks growing doubts about what they will achieve when they get there.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not alone in insisting: “We’re going to do it. We’re going to get the remaining Hamas terrorist battalions in Rafah.” Opposition leader Benny Gantz is also pushing for it: “To those who say the price is too high, I say clearly: Hamas has a choice. They can surrender, release the hostages, and the residents of Gaza can celebrate Ramadan.”
This braggadocio is for domestic consumption.
It has taken the Israeli army four months to fight their way down a piece of land 41-km long and up to 12-km wide. In contrast, it took just over five weeks for the US-led coalition to capture Baghdad in 2003. Israel has used as much munition in four months as the US did in seven years in Iraq.
Obviously, something has gone badly wrong.
Either Israeli soldiers are not the stormtroopers they thought they were, or the resistance of Hamas and other fighters has been unexpectedly stiff. One thing is for sure: Israel’s forces have not been fighting with one hand tied behind their back.
Summing up the mood of the country, Likud MK Nissim Vaturi said in the Knesset last week, “whoever received a bullet probably deserves it.” And the army has been trying to deliver just that.
Mass exodus conditions
The bombing, artillery and drone strikes have been tailor-made to terrorise civilians and to create the conditions for a mass exodus. Mass casualties and attacks on critical infrastructure are war aims, they are not collateral damage. The International Court of Justice clearly recognised this in imposing an order on Israel to comply with the Genocide Convention.
Beneath the bluster, there are glimpses of a darker reality to the ground campaign. Israel’s military intelligence, for one, believes that Hamas will survive as a militant group capable of mounting operations against them. It says that “authentic support” for Hamas remains high among the Palestinians in Gaza. Israeli journalist Ilana Dayan of Channel 12 reported that these conclusions were presented to political leaders a week ago by senior army officers, Shin Bet officials, and members of the National Security Council. “In this regard, at least,” she suggested, “there won’t be absolute victory.”
So even if Israel forced Hamas out of Gaza, and I don’t believe it can, will it have won? Many outside Israel reached that conclusion four months ago.
Other questions are just as pressing for the Israeli high command: do they have the troops to mount a major operation in Rafah and reoccupy the Philadelphi Corridor, without having to call up more reservists? A certain amount of war fatigue must be setting in.
A second set of issues is the situation with neighbouring Egypt. Thus far President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has been playing ball with Israel over the Rafah border. Sisi is allowing Israel to dictate the flow of aid into Gaza and is preparing for an influx of refugees. The Sinai Foundation for Human Rights said Egyptian authorities are preparing a 10km buffer zone to receive displaced Palestinians.
But the reoccupation of the Philadelphi Corridor, a 14-km long buffer zone along the border, would be a breach of the peace treaty Egypt signed with Israel in 1979, although not enough to make Egypt tear it up. The biggest fear of Egyptian military intelligence is the infiltration of militants into Sinai, which already has an insurgency firmly embedded there.
Waves of resistance
A third factor affecting an imminent ground invasion of Rafah is Washington.