Gaza Trapped in Rafah

The Israeli operation in Gaza has been ongoing for nearly four and a half months. In this operation, according to data from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Ministry of Health, nearly 30,000 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli army. A significant portion of these victims are children and women. On the day Israel announced its decision to launch a military operation in Gaza, no one expected it to last this long. What led to this assumption, of course, was that Israel's previous military operations in Gaza had been shorter. Naturally, the fact that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself declared the goal of the operation to be the eradication of Hamas from Gaza actually pointed to a longer process. Still, no one believed that such a goal could be successfully achieved. In truth, no one believes it even now. Therefore, the duration of the Gaza operation, which has a goal that seems so close to impossible to reach, remains uncertain. On the other hand, the Israeli army has now turned its attention to Rafah, the southernmost tip of Gaza on the Egyptian border. This appears to be the final major hurdle before the potential end of this operation. With this latest stage of the operation in Gaza, it is worth re-examining the current state of the Palestinian issue.

As I have discussed in previous articles, specifically regarding Gaza, there is a Biden administration that does not appear confident due to the internal contradictions of the Democratic Party, yet continues to support Israel. The support maintained by the Biden administration almost overshadows the reckless rhetoric directed at European allies by former President Donald Trump during his current campaign as a presidential candidate. No matter how alarming they may be, Trump's statements are, at least for now, merely campaign rhetoric. While his presidential performance in the previous term also greatly disturbed Europe, it was not of a nature to justify today's fears. Of course, analysts point out that there were officials like John Bolton by Trump's side at that time who kept him in check, and that Trump might prefer not to work with such people in a second term. Nevertheless, all of this is currently just speculation. Although it would not be surprising if a potential second Trump term were remembered for recklessness in unilaterally supporting Israel, just as with the decision to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, it is certain that this does not compensate for the disappointment created by the Biden administration.

Returning to Israel, Netanyahu's operation in Gaza We know that he was quite comfortable when launching this operation because he was being shaken by major protests and struggling with several corruption investigations simultaneously before this operation. For Netanyahu, who formed a new war cabinet after Hamas's October 7 attack and included some key center-right political figures, the prolongation of the operation is, in this respect, a kind of political blessing. Even though Israel's military presence in Gaza had been reduced to a quarter in previous weeks, the decision not to send representatives to Cairo for negotiations aimed at securing the release of more hostages held by Hamas—a decision made unilaterally without consulting other members of the war cabinet—seems to be evidence that Netanyahu will continue his maximalist stance.

Netanyahu is a prime minister who experiences tension not only with the more moderate center-right figures in his cabinet but sometimes even with military officials. The Biden administration's proposals for Gaza after the operation, including the role of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority,have not received a positive response from him so far. The desire to conduct an operation in Rafah, where the majority of Gazans—who were called upon by Israel itself to move south from the northern Gaza Strip—have come and are now trapped, inevitably brings to mind the report by the Israeli Ministry of Intelligence, which surfaced even before the operation and included the displacement of Gazans to the Sinai as one of its three possible scenarios.

There has been no concrete statement from Israel regarding its plans for the post-operation period. This only increases suspicions. Furthermore, there are statements made by Israeli officials or influential figures who, while not holding official positions, which were also cited as grounds for the case filed by South Africa at the International Court of Justice, that suggest genocidal intent regarding Palestinians and Gazans. It has been written and discussed for months that, unlike the US, which does not want the war to spread on a regional scale, Israel wants the US to be more militarily engaged in the region in a way that favors Israel, and that it may have engaged in certain provocations to this end. Conversely, a recent report by The Washington Post suggests that Iran has warned the groups it supports in the region to exercise restraint and that it views the fact that the Palestinian issue has become the focus of the world agenda and that the normalization efforts of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries with Israel have been stalled as a gain that must be protected. These claims are also supported by the fact that Iran and Iran-backed groups have not carried out any attacks against the US and its allies for about two weeks. Moreover, the Kataib Hezbollah groups in Syria and Iraq while a high-ranking official has been killed in a US strike during this period. Although Hezbollah has been conducting a war of attrition against Israel's northern borders, it has refrained from declaring an open war. Hamas, meanwhile, having lost 12,000 militants according to Israel or 6,000 according to its own statements, finds itself as an actor with dwindling options. In the current situation, the only resistance actor that has not yet been reined in is the Houthis in Yemen. However, the Houthis appear to have no capacity to directly impact Israel.

Israel expanding its Gaza operation toward Rafah and somehow clearing the area will both increase pressure on other Arab countries, primarily Egypt, and bring the operation to an end, thereby eliminating the state of immunity that Netanyahu currently enjoys. In such a scenario, it is obvious that Egypt, in particular, would not want to take on the responsibility of being complicit in Israel's crime by unilaterally accepting Gazans. It would not be wrong to assume that Egypt has shared these concerns with every country it has met with recently, including Turkey.

Considering that Netanyahu also prefers to prolong the operation as much as possible, it would not be surprising if he attempts to stretch this operation into 2025, when it is highly likely that the Biden administration will have left office and the Trump administration will have taken over. For all these reasons, while the search for solutions on the Arab front—including plans to integrate Hamas into the Palestine Liberation Organization—is more intense than ever, the Netanyahu government appears extremely indifferent.