For weeks, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has signaled his intent to launch a full-scale offensive into Rafah, the southern Gazan city that’s now home to more than a million Palestinians seeking safe haven in their war-ravaged territory. Netanyahu and his allies want to wipe out militant group Hamas’s footprint in the city — no matter the skepticism of experts who reckon the Islamist organization is far from defeated or the concerns of foreign diplomats and aid workers who fear the calamities for civilians that would follow the Israeli onslaught.
A major move would trigger the frantic flight of hundreds of thousands of Gazans, many of whom arrived in the city after their homes and neighborhoods elsewhere in Gaza were pulverized by the Israeli military in its post-Oct. 7 war against Hamas. For months, there’s been speculation over whether Egypt would allow tens of thousands of Palestinians to flee to safety in the Sinai desert. Cairo is not keen to admit a refugee influx, given both its own internal security concerns and larger Pan-Arab worries that the Palestinians will be blocked from returning to their homeland like a previous generation of Palestinian refugees.
On Tuesday, Volker Turk, the United Nations’ human rights chief, said leaders around the world “stand united on the imperative of protecting the civilian population trapped in Rafah.”
The Biden administration and the United States’ key European partners have all urged Netanyahu to reconsider an intensive Rafah operation. On Wednesday, in a phone call with the Dutch prime minister, Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi said a ground offensive would have “catastrophic consequences” both for the humanitarian situation in war-ravaged Gaza and for broader “regional peace and security.”
On Thursday, amid weeks of back-channel discussions, it appeared that momentum may have revived for some sort of political agreement. An Egyptian delegation will travel to Israel on Friday to discuss “security coordination,” an Israeli official told my colleagues, possibly signaling a resumption of efforts to secure a cease-fire and hostage release deal after months of fitful indirect talks between Israel, Hamas and their intermediaries.
The latest round of diplomacy comes at a moment when it seemed the long-mooted strike on Rafah was becoming inevitable. The tempo of Israeli airstrikes on the city increased this week. Netanyahu’s top spokesperson said Israel would be “moving ahead” with a Rafah operation. On the prime minister’s right flank, extremist ministers in his coalition had already threatened to pull support for his governing mandate if he doesn’t proverbially finish the job.
Netanyahu faced other domestic pressures, too. Mass anti-government protests returned to the streets of Tel Aviv in recent weeks, with demonstrators calling on Netanyahu to prioritize the release of Hamas’s hostages — over his sweeping, stated military objectives — and also demanding fresh elections. The prime minister has abysmal approval ratings in the aftermath of Hamas’s deadly Oct. 7 terrorist strike on Israel; a new election would likely force him out of power.
“Netanyahu has zero interest in giving this gift,” wrote Haaretz’s Ravit Hecht, referring to the prime minister allowing an election that he would likely lose. “He depicts the very word ‘election’ as criminal and unpatriotic. And even if he is forced to promise to hold one, nobody will believe him.”
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