Israeli Forces Push Deeper Into Rafah (2024)

Israel’s military says it is fighting near central Rafah, apparently expanding its operation in the city.

Israeli troops were “continuing operational activity in specific areas of Rafah,” had dismantled several tunnels and killed fighters in “close-quarters encounters,” the military said in a statement. Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military spokesman, said in a briefing on Thursday evening that Israeli forces had so far killed more than 180 “terrorists.”

Around 815,000 people have already left Rafah as a result of the fighting and Israeli warnings to flee, the United Nations said this week, amounting to well over half the number of Palestinians who had crowded into the city in recent months to escape fighting elsewhere in Gaza.

It was not possible to independently verify Israel’s account of the fighting. Hamas did not immediately comment on the fighting on Thursday.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has said that an assault on Rafah was essential to defeating remaining Hamas battalions and dismantling the group’s infrastructure in Gaza, including tunnels beneath the city. Israel also wants to destroy tunnels running from Gaza into Egypt beneath a buffer strip on the southern edge of the territory. Israeli forces are advancing along the buffer strip, known in Israel as the Philadelphi Corridor, according to the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project. The Israeli military said it would not comment on the location of its forces.

President Biden has warned Mr. Netanyahu against launching a large military operation in Rafah without a plan for its civilian population, including the more than one million people who moved there to escape bombardment and fighting elsewhere.

Most of the Palestinians who have fled Rafah in recent weeks have moved to a zone that includes the cities of Khan Younis and Deir al Balah and the coastal village of Al-Mawasi. The Israeli authorities said they had set up and equipped humanitarian zones for displaced people.

Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner-general of the main U.N. agency that aids Palestinians, UNRWA, said this week that the areas newly displaced people were arriving in were desperately overcrowded and lack the “minimal conditions to provide emergency humanitarian assistance in a safe and dignified manner.”

Gaza’s Ministry of Health said that more than 100 people had been killed in Gaza between Monday and Wednesday, and that hundreds of others had been wounded. It was not possible to corroborate the figures independently.

The Israeli military also said it was operating in central Gaza and in Jabaliya, in northern Gaza. Israel withdrew its forces from much of the territory earlier in the year but has returned to parts of northern and central Gaza to fight what it says are attempts by Hamas to reconstitute its forces there.

International attention has focused this week on announcements by Norway, Spain and Ireland that they would recognize an independent Palestinian state, and on a decision by the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court on Monday to seek arrest warrants for leaders of both Israel and Hamas for war crimes.

Israel has denounced those moves and said it would press on with its campaign to eliminate Hamas.

But some military analysts have raised questions about whether Israel’s military operation in Rafah can deal a decisive blow to Hamas, saying that many of the group’s fighters, wary of engaging in a direct confrontation with a superior military force, had likely moved out of the city before the long-anticipated incursion began.

Israeli negotiators will continue talks on hostages, and other news.

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The C.I.A. director is to meet with his Israeli counterpart this weekend to try to revive cease-fire talks.

But core to the dispute were disagreements over how to define a cessation of hostilities between Hamas and Israel, and how different stages of the cease-fire would be put into effect.

The resumption of talks, at an undisclosed location in Europe, is expected to take place over the next few days. It is not clear if Egyptian and Qatari negotiators will join Mr. Burns and David Barnea, the chief of the Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, to directly take part in the discussions.

Mr. Burns, however, has been in close contact with Egyptian and Qatari negotiators as the mediators look to get the talks back on track, said a U.S. official.

In early May, Mr. Burns did shuttle diplomacy between Egypt and Israel trying to push for the first phase of an agreement to begin, including a staggered process for the release of hostages and a temporary halt in fighting.

The talks in the coming days are expected to be the first since that round of negotiations ended. While it is unclear what could be achieved with Mr. Burns’s new discussions, restarting the talks is, at this point, a notable development.

U.S. officials say a hostage-for-cease-fire agreement has to be reached for all their other diplomatic efforts to get momentum, including discussions of a postwar administration in Gaza and a megadeal for a Palestinian state that the Americans and Saudis want Israel to agree to.

But Israeli military operations in Rafah continue to complicate the picture. The more aggressive the Israeli operations there, the less Hamas wants to negotiate.

Some American officials have said Israel is taking their advice on how to mitigate some civilian casualties — which has contributed to an erosion of international support for Israel with over 35,000 people dead, according to the Gazan health authorities.

On Wednesday, Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser, said he was optimistic that Israel, so far, was not conducting the kind of major operation in Rafah that the United States had feared it would. But questions remain about exactly what the Israeli intentions for Rafah over the longer term might be.

As Israel’s hard line stokes international anger, Netanyahu may get benefits at home.

Political analysts say that Mr. Netanyahu hopes to leverage the rising international criticism to tamp down frustration at home over his failure to either decisively defeat Hamas or bring home the remaining hostages in Gaza. Some of Mr. Netanyahu’s key rivals rallied to his defense on Monday after Mr. Khan announced that he would seek a warrant for his arrest.

“Israel is not only isolated, but feels that it is under some kind of siege,” said Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli diplomat.

For many Israelis, memories of the massacre in southern Israel — in which roughly 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage, according to the Israeli authorities — remain a constant backdrop to the conflict. Months later, Israeli news media still continually airs the stories of victims, survivors and the families of those held hostage in Gaza.

“Israelis have been living and reliving the horrors of that day — but also with an eye toward the possibility that it could one day be repeated,” said Natan Sachs, who directs the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. “That fear is a key driver of both Israeli policy and public support for policy.”

There is swelling discontent among Israelis, many of whom are frustrated with the failure of their government to bring home the remaining 128 living and dead hostages. Others, including senior Israeli officials, are frustrated with Mr. Netanyahu’s failure to articulate a clear endgame for what could become an interminable conflict.

But calls for a cease-fire for its own sake have found little purchase. Israel’s leaders — including some of Mr. Netanyahu’s top rivals — generally support the ongoing Israeli military operation in Rafah, which U.N. officials estimate has displaced over 800,000 Palestinians. U.S. officials have repeatedly raised concerns over the assault in meetings with their Israeli counterparts.

In the face of the decision by Spain, Norway, and Ireland to recognize a Palestinian state on Wednesday, Israeli officials tried to turn the conversation back to Oct. 7. Israel recalled its ambassadors, and the foreign minister, Israel Katz, said he would screen footage of the abduction of five female soldiers during the Hamas attack for them during a “severe reprimand.”

Mr. Netanyahu and other members of his right-wing coalition have reacted with defiance to criticism from abroad. He called the decision of the three European nations to recognize Palestinian statehood “a prize for terrorism” and excoriated the I.C.C. prosecutor for suggesting that Hamas fighters and Israeli forces had both committed crimes during the current war.

“How dare you compare the monsters of Hamas to the soldiers of the Israeli Army, the world’s most moral military?” Mr. Netanyahu said.

One of the biggest questions, however, is how long Mr. Netanyahu can stoke public grievance against international criticism at home without further damaging Israel’s ties with key allies abroad, including the United States.

“In terms of policy, it’s absolutely disastrous and will have long-term consequences,” Mr. Sachs said. “But in terms of politics, it may be working.”