Can Israeli PM Netanyahu achieve his stated war objectives with Rafah assault?

For the Netanyahu government, however, Rafah represents a last opportunity to declare the war won and, in the process, to ensure Netanyahu has a political future. (AFP). (AP)
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Updated 13 May 2024
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Can Israeli PM Netanyahu achieve his stated war objectives with Rafah assault?

  • Despite claim there are four brigades in Rafah, it is unclear how many operational fighters Hamas still has
  • Some Israeli analysts say Israel needs to make Hamas ideologically and politically irrelevant, not do the opposite

LONDON: This week, before-and-after imagery released by US commercial satellite company Planet Labs showed the extent of the damage inflicted in just one day by Israeli forces on the outskirts of Rafah, close to the Egyptian border.

This is not the city of Rafah itself — yet. Awaiting a resolution of the political standoff between their government and the US, which has threatened to stop supplying ammunition if Israel invades Rafah, the 98th Airborne and the 162nd Armored divisions are massing to the south of the city.

In the satellite imagery captured on Tuesday, groups of tanks can be seen in the vicinity of the Rafah crossing, which Israeli troops occupied and closed on Monday, and grouped in several other strategic locations.

While they are waiting, however, they have been laying waste to much of the surrounding infrastructure and indulging in some symbolic wanton vandalism: in a video released on Tuesday a tank rolls over a “I love Gaza” sign near the crossing.




Netanyahu has gambled his political future on two objectives tied to a continuation of the devastating and murderous assault on Gaza — the destruction of Hamas and the killing of its top commanders. (AFP)

The contrast between the satellite images taken on Monday and Tuesday is striking. In the course of one day, hundreds of homes, commercial buildings, agricultural plots and other structures on dozens of sites either side of the Salah Al-Din highway were destroyed.

“This,” said a spokesman for the Israeli government on Tuesday, “is the beginning of our mission to take out the last four Hamas brigades in Rafah.”

But although Netanyahu has gambled his political future on two objectives tied to a continuation of the devastating and murderous assault on Gaza — the destruction of Hamas and the killing of its top commanders — after seven months of all-out warfare those objectives seem increasingly unattainable.

Despite the Israeli claim that there are four brigades in Rafah, it is unclear exactly how many operational fighters Hamas still has, or exactly where they are. It is also not clear if they have chosen, as some commentators have suggested, to make a “last stand” in Rafah, or even, after seven months of war, if they have the weapons and ammunition necessary to do so.




Groups of tanks were seen in the vicinity of the Rafah crossing. (AFP)

Even less certain is the location of Hamas military leader Yahya Sinwar, from whom nothing has been heard since the invasion of Gaza began.

Sinwar, Israel’s public enemy number one, has become a ghost, so much so that on Thursday US National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby made a public plea for him to “come clean about what his intentions are.”

Writing in The Spectator this week, Middle East analyst Jonathan Spyer suggested that, “contrary to what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu might wish, Sinwar, his brother Mohammed, and the Hamas military leader Mohammed Deif are almost certainly not currently besieged in a bunker in Rafah, surrounded and obliged to either agree to the Egyptian (ceasefire) proposal or be crushed beneath the treads of the 98th and the 162nd.”

In fact, added Spyer, director of research at the Middle East Forum, “it is not even certain if the Hamas leaders and their hostages are even still in the Rafah area, or ... in some other part of the strip.”

Gaza, although barely larger than the small Mediterranean island of Malta, has nevertheless proved to be a frustrating landscape for Israeli operations.




“The only way to defeat the Hamas ideology is with a better ideology, and that is to make the two-state solution real to Palestinians,” said Gershon Baskin. (AFP)

On Thursday it emerged that even before the Oct. 7 attack, Israel had tried, and failed, to assassinate both Sinwar and Al-Deif, the commander-in-chief of Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigades.

In remarks made to a Jewish organization in the US and broadcast on Israeli television’s Channel 12, Israel’s former military chief of staff Aviv Kochavi said a perceived “change with Hamas” in 2021 had led to the decision to try to kill the two men.

“We tried, and it’s hard,” he was reported as having said.

“In a densely populated, heavily built-up area it is very hard. So, we had been working for months in order to procure the operation but we couldn’t.”

Kochavi also added his voice to the growing chorus in Israel critical of Netanyahu’s increasingly unpopular determination to continue military operations in Gaza.




Yahya Sinwar, Israel’s public enemy number one, has become a ghost. (AFP)

“I don’t think there is a way to bring back the hostages without halting for the time being the war,” he said. Furthermore, he added, “I don’t think we can achieve complete victory in months — forget it, it will take years.”

For the Netanyahu government, however, Rafah represents a stage for political theatre — a last opportunity to declare the war won and, in the process, to ensure Netanyahu has a political future.

INNUMBERS

• 120 People taken hostage by Hamas on Oct. 7 still unaccounted for.

• 252 Israelis and foreigners taken hostage in the attack, according to Israel.

• 80,000 People known to have fled Rafah since last Monday after Israeli warning.

“They're looking for a victory,” said Yossi Mekelberg, a professor of international relations and an associate fellow of the Middle East and North Africa Program at London-based policy institute Chatham House.

“They are looking for a photo op: ‘Here is his head, we’ve cut off the head of Hamas, now it’s all over’.”

Although the message from Biden “is very clear — for the United States to even suggest imposing an arms ban on Israel is a huge thing,” Netanyahu is also facing a potential internal revolt by his right-wing cabinet members, such as National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Givr and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who oppose any ceasefire with Hamas.




Despite the Israeli claim that there are four brigades in Rafah, it is unclear exactly how many operational fighters Hamas still has. (AFP)

Ultra-religious, “they are on a different planet,” said Mekelberg. “It’s not between them and other human beings, it's between them and God. And they are telling Netanyahu if he compromises too much with Hamas they will leave the government, and that there is no point in them staying in government if we don't enter Rafah.”

Whether they would find Sinwar there is anybody’s guess, says Gershon Baskin, a former adviser to Israeli, Palestinian and international prime ministers on the Middle East peace process.

“I'm sure that he's not just sitting and waiting,” he said. “He has certainly booby-trapped tunnels and bunkers in the whole area between Rafah and Khan Younis, and maybe they also have access to places north of there. We don’t know.”

But if Sinwar is in Rafah, “from my experience with the man there is no way he is going to surrender. He will fight to the death. I think that he believes that he will never survive this war. He’s not afraid of death. In fact, he believes that it’s his duty to become a martyr and he will try to kill as many Israelis along the way as possible.”




For the Netanyahu government, however, Rafah represents a stage for political theatre. (Reuters)

According to Baskin, an all-out ground attack on Rafah would be “catastrophic, for any hostages and the civilian population. There’s no doubt about it. I have heard there are about 40,000 people left in the quadrant that Israel said they wanted people to move out of, and you have another 1.2 million at least in the city of Rafah and its surroundings.”

Humanitarian considerations aside, Mekelberg believes that, even if Rafah is attacked and razed to the ground, Sinwar is killed and victory declared, assaulting the city would be a strategic mistake — and would not deliver the hoped-for existential blow to Hamas.

“The main threat to Israel from Hamas comes from its ideology and politics, not from its military,” he told Arab News.




The contrast between the satellite images taken on Monday and Tuesday is striking. (AFP/Maxar Technologies)

“The military you can deal with. But the Israelis need to convince people that this ideology doesn’t serve the Gazan people or Palestinian people generally, and that there is an alternative that offers hope, and it is doing very badly at that right now.

“Israel needs to make Hamas ideologically and politically irrelevant and it is doing exactly the opposite, making them more and more relevant.”

Baskin agrees.

“The only way to defeat the Hamas ideology is with a better ideology, and that is to make the two-state solution real to Palestinians, to show them that their fight, their struggle for independence and dignity, is on the road to victory,” he told Arab News.

That, he added, “is the only way to defeat Hamas” and, with the right leadership in Israel, and an alternative to Mahmoud Abbas for the Palestinians, doing so would be “easy.”

“All Israel has to do is declare that it recognizes the state of Palestine, and then every other country in the world would do that as well,” he said.




“The main threat to Israel from Hamas comes from its ideology and politics, not from its military,” Yossi Mekelberg told Arab News. (AFP)

“Then what I would do is organize a regional conference, including all of our neighbors, hoping that the Saudis would participate, and asking the Americans and Europeans to join in but not to run the show, and negotiate borders and Jerusalem and refugees and economic relations.”

The stumbling block to all this, he says, is Netanyahu, “who since 2009 has done everything he can to avoid the possibility of a two-state solution and for whom this war is definitely about his own personal political interest.”

 


‘What wrong did he do?’ Gaza family mourn three-year-old shot dead

Updated 11 June 2025
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‘What wrong did he do?’ Gaza family mourn three-year-old shot dead

  • In Gaza, “There’s no hope or peace”

KHAN YUNIS, Palestinian Territories: Gazan mother Amal Abu Shalouf ran her hand over her son’s face and hair, a brief farewell before a man abruptly sealed the body bag carrying the three-year-old who was killed just hours earlier on Tuesday.
“Amir, my love, my dear!” cried his mother, struggling to cross the crowded courtyard of Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza’s main city, where several bodies lay in white plastic shrouds.
According to the civil defense agency, at least nine people were killed on Tuesday in the southern Gaza Strip as Israeli forces carried out military operations, more than 20 months into the war triggered by Hamas’s 2023 attack on Israel.
Contacted by AFP, the military did not respond to a request for comment about Amir Abu Shalouf’s death.
At the hospital, a man carried the boy’s body in his arms through a crowd of dozens of mourners.
“I swear, I can’t take it,” his teenage brother, Ahmad Abu Shalouf, said, his face covered in tears.
“What wrong did he do?” said another brother, Mohammad Abu Shalouf. “An innocent little boy, sitting inside his tent, and a bullet struck him in the back.”
Mohammad said he had “found him shot in the back” as he returned to the tent that has become the family’s home in Al-Mawasi, a coastal area near Khan Yunis that is now a massive encampment for displaced Palestinians.
The devastating war has created dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza, where the United Nations has warned that the entire population is at risk of famine.
The grieving mother, comforted by relatives, said her young son had been begging for food in recent days and dreaming of a piece of meat.
“There is no food, no water, no clothing,” said Amal, who has eight children to take care of.
Amal said she too was injured in the pre-dawn incident that killed her son.
“I heard something fall next to my foot while I was sitting and baking, and suddenly felt something hit me. I started screaming,” she said.
Outside the tent at the time, she said she tried crawling and reaching for other family members.
“Then I heard my daughter screaming from inside the tent...  found them holding my son, his abdomen and back covered in blood.”
A group of men formed lines to recite a prayer for the dead, their words almost drowned out by the noise of Israeli drones flying overhead.
In the second row, Ahmad Abu Shalouf held his hands over his stomach in prayer, unable to hold back a stream of tears.
Similar scenes played out at the hospital courtyard again and again over several hours, as the day’s dead were mourned.
At one point, an emaciated man collapsed in front of the shrouded bodies.
One mourner pressed his head against one of the bodies, carried on a stretcher at the start of a funeral procession, before being helped up by others.
At a distance, a group of women supported Umm Mohammad Shahwan, a grieving mother, with all of them in tears.
“We need the war to end,” said Amal Abu Shalouf.
In Gaza, she lamented, “there’s no hope or peace.”


Syria rescuers say two killed in drone strikes on northwest

Updated 11 June 2025
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Syria rescuers say two killed in drone strikes on northwest

  • During a meeting in Riyadh last month, US President Donald Trump called on his Syrian counterpart Ahmed Al-Sharaa to help Washington prevent a resurgence by Daesh

DAMASCUS: Two people were killed in separate drone strikes Tuesday on a car and a motorcycle in the northwestern bastion of the Islamist former rebels who now head the Syrian government, rescuers said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the twin drone strikes in the Idlib region but a US-led coalition in Syria has carried out past strikes on terrorists in the area.
Earlier this year, the United States said it killed several commanders of Al-Qaeda’s Syria affiliate Hurras Al-Din in the area.
The group had recently announced it was breaking up on the orders of the interim government set up by the rebels after their overthrow of Bashar Assad in December.
US troops are deployed in Syria as part of a US-led coalition to fight the Daesh group.
When contacted by AFP, a US defense official said they were aware of the reports but had “nothing to provide” at the time.
During a meeting in Riyadh last month, US President Donald Trump called on his Syrian counterpart Ahmed Al-Sharaa to help Washington prevent a resurgence by Daesh.
 

 


Gaza-bound activist convoy enters Libya from Tunisia

Updated 11 June 2025
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Gaza-bound activist convoy enters Libya from Tunisia

  • Convoy members were heard chanting “Resistance, resistance” and “To Gaza we go by the millions” in a video posted on the organizing group’s official Facebook page

BEN GUERDANE, Tunisia: Hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists taking part in a convoy crossed the Tunisian border on Tuesday into Libya, aiming to keep heading eastwards until they break Israel’s blockade on the Palestinian territory, organizers said.
This comes after Israel intercepted an aid ship attempting to breach its blockade on Gaza, which was carrying 12 people, including campaigner Greta Thunberg and European parliament member Franco-Palestinian Rima Hassan.
The “Soumoud” convoy, meaning “steadfastness” in Arabic, set off from Tunis on Monday morning, spokesman Ghassen Henchiri told Tunisian radio station Mosaique FM.
He said it includes 14 buses and around 100 other vehicles, carrying hundreds of people.
Convoy members were heard chanting “Resistance, resistance” and “To Gaza we go by the millions” in a video posted on the organizing group’s official Facebook page.
Henchiri also told Jawhara FM radio channel the convoy plans to remain in Libya for “three or four days at most” before crossing into Egypt and continuing on to Rafah.
Organizers have said Egyptian authorities have not yet provided passage to enter the country, but Henchiri said the convoy received “reassuring” information.
Organizers said the convoy was not bringing aid into Gaza, but rather aimed at carrying out a “symbolic act” by breaking the blockade on the territory described by the United Nations as “the hungriest place on Earth.”
Algerian, Mauritanian, Moroccan and Libyan activists were also among the group, which is set to travel along the Libyan coast.
After 21 months of war, Israel is facing mounting international pressure to allow more aid into Gaza to alleviate widespread shortages of food and basic supplies.
The Madleen aid boat, which set sail for Gaza from Italy on June 1, was halted by Israeli forces on Monday and towed to the port of Ashdod.
The 12 people on board were then transferred to Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv, the foreign ministry said, adding that Thunberg had been deported.
Five French activists were taken into custody after they refused to leave Israel voluntarily.
 

 


Algeria man’s self-immolation investigated as ‘terrorism’

A general view shows the Justice Ministry in the Algerian capital, Algiers. (AFP file photo)
Updated 11 June 2025
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Algeria man’s self-immolation investigated as ‘terrorism’

  • The charges include “endangering the lives and physical safety of others” and “publishing and promoting false and malicious news”

ALGIERS: Algerian authorities have launched a counterterrorism investigation after a man had set himself on fire, an act investigators suspect was part of coordinated plot with links abroad, prosecutors said Tuesday.
Faouzi Zegout was injured as a result of the self-immolation on June 1 outside the justice ministry to protest a case he was involved in.
A video of the incident in the capital Algiers circulated on social media, showing Zegout saying he had done it “because of a judge... who arbitrarily threatened me with a 10-year prison sentence.”
At an Algiers court on Tuesday, a prosecutor said that five people had been detained in the case, without specifying whether Zegout was one of them.
One of the five has been released under judicial supervision, and the case has been transferred to a counterterrorism division, the court heard.
According to the prosecutor, investigators had found that the act was orchestrated by an “organized criminal group” with suspected ties abroad.
The prosecutor said the group had allegedly plotted the act and assigned roles, including filming and publishing the self-immolation online, to “disturb public order and disrupt institutions.”
The charges include “endangering the lives and physical safety of others” and “publishing and promoting false and malicious news.”
The person who filmed the incident had “communicated with people abroad,” had “multiple bank accounts” and “received money transfers from people,” the prosecutor said, without specifying when the alleged transfers had occurred or who made them.
Zegout has said that he recently appeared in court for launching a fundraiser without official authorization to help cover medical costs for sick people.
A court in Frenda, his hometown about 340 kilometers (200 miles) west of Algiers, was scheduled to deliver its decision the same day he set himself on fire.
 


Israel cancels waiver allowing Israeli and Palestinian banks to work together

Updated 10 June 2025
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Israel cancels waiver allowing Israeli and Palestinian banks to work together

JERUSALEM: Israel canceled a waiver on Tuesday that had allowed Israeli banks to work with Palestinian ones, threatening to paralyze Palestinian financial institutions, Israel’s finance ministry said in a statement.
“Against the backdrop of the Palestinian Authority’s delegitimization campaign against the State of Israel internationally, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has instructed Accountant General CPA Yahli Rotenberg to cancel the indemnity provided to correspondent banks dealing with banks operating in Palestinian Authority territories,” the ministry said.
Smotrich had threatened in May 2024 to cut the vital connection between Israel and Palestinian banks in the occupied West Bank in retaliation for the recognition of the State of Palestine by three European countries.
The Palestinian financial and banking system is dependent on the regular renewal of the Israeli waiver.
It protects Israeli banks from potential legal action relating to transactions with their Palestinian counterparts, for instance in relation to financing terror.
In July, G7 countries urged Israel to “take necessary action” to ensure the continuity of Palestinian financial systems.
It came after US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned that “to cut Palestinian banks from Israeli counterparts would create a humanitarian crisis.”
The overwhelming majority of exchanges in the West Bank are in shekels, Israel’s national currency, because the Palestinian Authority does not have a central bank that would allow it to print its own currency.