There is, as Ecclesiastes reminded us, a time for war and a time for peace. In its 76-year history, Israel has rarely selected the time for war, almost always reinforcing its position and responding in self-defence to Arab attacks. The invasion of Rafah will be another such tragic chapter in the tragic history of the Jewish state. Hamas has made it a time for war.
The tanks went in after volleys of rockets were fired by Hamas
Has it started already? Last night, Israeli tanks entered the southern town after a last-ditch ceasefire proposal from Hamas was rejected as inadequate. But the operation has so far fallen short of a full invasion. The Israeli Defence Forces took control of the Gazan side of the Rafah Crossing on the Egyptian border as part of a ‘pinpoint operation’ against the terror group in ‘limited areas of eastern Rafah,’ the IDF said, after ‘intelligence information [suggested] that terrorists were using the crossing area for terror purposes.’ Before the attack, the IDF said it had carried out ‘coordination with the international organisations operating in the area, with a request to move towards the humanitarian area as part of the effort to evacuate the population that has been taking place.’
The tanks went in after volleys of rockets were fired by Hamas from the Rafah crossing at Kerem Shalom in southern Israel, killing four soldiers and wounding others. The terror group then appeared to back off from its game of chicken by making a surprise offer of a ceasefire; according to the New York Times, however, the 33 elderly, infirm and child captives that it offered to release – which had been reduced from 40 because seven had been killed – included several bodies. This depravity, combined with the audacious rocket attack, forced Israel’s hand.
The events continue to unfold as I write. Footage leaked online this morning showed an armoured personnel carrier flying the Israeli colours alongside the flag of the 401st armoured brigade rumbling along the Philadelphi corridor, a narrow buffer zone that runs along the border between Gaza and Egypt. Israeli flags were also seen above the Rafah Crossing, where Gazans have previously been able to escape into Egypt by paying Cairo about $5,000 (£4,000) a head. (A Palestinian friend sheltering in the south recently got his wife and children out this way, after raising money from friends overseas. This aptly illustrates Egypt’s intransigence in the face of impending humanitarian suffering, a fact strangely overlooked by the world’s media.)
The Rafah invasion, if this is indeed what we are witnessing, will come after months of intense international pressure directed at the Jewish state. With their eyes on their restive progressive publics and looming elections, almost every aspiring and serving world leader, from Sir Keir Starmer to Joe Biden, has been wagging their fingers at Israel, insisting that this is a time for peace, despite all the evidence to the contrary. According to the Wall Street Journal, the United States has even been delaying the sales of thousands of precision weapons to Jerusalem, including MK-82 bombs, fuses and JDAM guidance kits, as part of the pressure campaign to head off the attack on Rafah.
This move is emblematic of the myopia of the international community. Without precision weapons, Israel will be forced to resort to far less accurate munitions, increasing the civilian death toll considerably. Call me cynical, but the White House appears to be overtly applying Hamas’s playbook: a higher civilian death toll would mean a larger volume of disturbing pictures coming out of Rafah, which would lead to greater international pressure, which would legitimise further strongarm tactics by the Biden administration.
This is just the latest frustrating chapter in the story of the world’s democracies folding under wave upon wave of propaganda from Hamas, amplified with deplorable enthusiasm by international television outlets. We have all known the strategy since the start of the war. Hamas has designed the battlefield to produce as much footage of suffering civilians as possible. This is its force multiplier; the aim is to harness western public opinion so that Israel’s campaign is curtailed by the international community before Hamas is obliterated, allowing it to commence plans for the next October 7.
Of course, the international media, from the BBC down, should be informing viewers that Hamas censors much of the footage coming out of Gaza. This censorship is the reason we never see any pictures of dead or wounded Hamas terrorists, leaving western audiences with the false impression that Israel is waging war solely against civilians.
Israel has been doggedly taking huge lengths to spring this trap, including dropping hundreds of thousands of leaflets warning people to move away from the battlefield prior to attacks. So we find ourselves in a surreal dynamic where the attacker attempts to protect the defender’s civilians while the defender tries to get them killed. It is true that the suffering in Gaza would be lighter had Israel’s governing coalition not been so dysfunctional. Excesses and failures occur in every war and this one is no different, particularly on the political level. But Hamas started this conflict and Israel – being a flawed democracy like all others – had no choice but to respond with the cabinet it had.
However intense the international pressure becomes, Jerusalem’s first duty remains to the security of its citizens. None of the world’s political leaders, from Starmer to Biden, has been able to adequately explain how cancelling a Rafah operation will make Israel safer. It is quite obvious that allowing a rump of Hamas to survive will only shore up further massacres for the future, followed by further wars. Without addressing that fact, hand-wringing about Rafah just sounds like moral posturing.
Of course, in the longer term there must be a political solution. Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu is an infuriating leader, in hock to the most unpleasant characters ever to have sat around an Israeli cabinet table. Of course, military operations produce resentment in the local population, some of whom will turn to terror. Of course, in the heat of war, soldiers don’t always act how they should, and command chains don’t always keep them in line. Israel must keep trying to improve these things. But ultimately, what is the alternative to this conflict?
The IDF commenced the Rafah incursion just after Holocaust Memorial Day. Before the attack, the Kfir brigade commander said: ‘On this day 80 years ago, the Nazis led Jews to the ovens for the sole crime of being Jewish. Today, at the end of Holocaust Memorial Day, we, the IDF, are going on the offensive to attack and to win. Never again is now in our hands…All stations, this is the Commander, onwards and after me until the end, until victory, until we win. On my command, go.’
Nobody – with the obvious exception of the jihadis – wants bloodshed. But it should be blindingly obvious to any observer that the writer of Ecclesiastes was right: however tragic, a time for war is not averted by pretending it is a time for peace.
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