Negotiate or attack: In Rafah, Israel’s options conflict in real time

The Israel-Hamas war and the lives of Israeli hostages and 2 million Palestinians in Gaza were in a state of whiplash Tuesday.

Back-and-forth diplomatic and military brinkmanship by Israel and Hamas teetered the conflict between a cease-fire and an all-out Israeli offensive in Rafah – the trend lines seemingly changing by the hour – which closely paralleled the acute dilemma that Israelis face over their priorities as the war concludes its seventh full month.

In response to a surprise announcement by Hamas late Monday that it had agreed to a cease-fire deal – only to reveal that some key wording had changed from a draft Israel agreed to – Israel sent midlevel negotiators to Cairo Tuesday to further discuss the counterproposal.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the latest draft was “far from Israel’s essential demands” and that he had instructed Israeli negotiators to “hold firm” in talks over the counterproposal, of which the United States and Egypt were previously aware.

Israeli news reports, citing officials, said major differences in Hamas’ counterproposal changed its commitment to releasing 33 civilian hostages to 33 “alive and dead” civilian hostages in the first six-week phase. Also at issue: a commitment to a “return to a sustainable calm” in the second phase – language short of a permanent cease-fire but seen as restricting Israel’s future ability to conduct operations to degrade Hamas’ military capabilities.

As of late Tuesday, Hamas, Israel, Qatar, and U.S. delegations were in Cairo as host Egypt and Washington tried to salvage what Hamas described as the “last chance” for a hostages-for-cease-fire deal.

Israeli incursion

Even as negotiators met, Israel increased its pressure on Hamas in the southern Gaza city of Rafah.

By early Tuesday morning, Israeli tank forces had taken control of the Palestinian side of the Egypt-Gaza border in Rafah after a night of fighting – seizing the main entry point into the blockaded strip and raising the Israeli flag at the border terminal.

For the second straight day, Israeli air and artillery forces pounded east Rafah – an area from which Israel ordered 100,000 Palestinian civilians to evacuate Monday. Many of them are displaced people whom Israel previously pushed into Rafah, then a “safe zone.”

Israeli officials said they believed four Hamas battalions remained in Rafah. The airstrikes killed 27 Palestinians, including several children, according to Palestinian health sources, while Israel said 20 gunmen were killed in their overnight operation.

As part of its seizure, Israel closed the Rafah crossing, the only exit for the few Gazans allowed by Egypt to leave, and the main entry point for humanitarian aid to the 2 million Palestinians in Gaza.

It came 24 hours after Israel closed the Kerem Shalom crossing, another main aid entry point, on Monday after Hamas rocket fire from Rafah killed four Israeli soldiers at the crossing Sunday.

Jens Laerke, deputy spokesperson for the United Nations humanitarian body known as the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, warned Tuesday that Israel’s closures of the two crossings left Gaza “choked off,” with U.N. agencies there facing very low stocks of foodstuffs.

The U.N. said the enclave had one day’s worth of fuel supplies, which are needed to power hospitals, water pumps, and trucks for food distribution.

The Israeli military said Tuesday that Kerem Shalom “will open once security conditions allow.”

It remained unclear whether Israel’s incursion along the “Philadelphi” border route into Rafah was a limited operation designed to pressure Hamas to release hostages, or the first stage in what Mr. Netanyahu had vowed, and large segments of Israeli public had demanded, for months: an assault on Rafah itself.

Dual war aims

Or, perhaps, it was an attempt at both.

“Seizing the crossing in Rafah today is an important step on the way to destroying any remaining military capability of Hamas,” Mr. Netanyahu said in an address Tuesday.

“The entrance into Rafah serves two main war goals: the return of our abductees and the elimination of Hamas,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “We continue the war against Hamas.”

The prime minister’s citing of two war aims that have often been in conflict accentuates what Israelis see as another impossible dilemma since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack:

On the one hand, a deal with Hamas to free the 132 remaining hostages risked leading to an end of the war that leaves Hamas standing. On the other, storming Hamas’ last purported Gaza stronghold, while offering Israelis a whiff of victory, also risked a surge in Palestinian civilian casualties and further global condemnation.

Mr. Netanyahu’s hard-right coalition partners have clamored for a Rafah invasion, and the prime minister himself vowed to invade with or without a cease-fire deal, leading some to allege he was sabotaging negotiations.

“I say to the leaders of the world, no amount of pressure, no decision by any international forum, will stop Israel from defending itself,” Mr. Netanyahu said Sunday evening, addressing a ceremony marking Israel’s observance of Holocaust Remembrance Day. “If Israel is forced to stand alone, Israel will stand alone.”

Israelis’ attitudes

For Israelis, including members of the military, attitudes toward a Rafah operation or potential alternatives vary widely. Many believe the government’s priority should be the hostages, yet nobody wants Hamas to continue to be a threat.

At the same time, a cease-fire and the end of the war could open the door to several desired outcomes for Israel: the rehabilitation of Israel’s standing globally and with the U.S.; a much-desired normalization of ties with additional Arab partners, especially Saudi Arabia; and the strengthening of a U.S.-led coalition of moderate Arab nations and Israel to counter the Iranian threat.  

On the other hand, entering Rafah to defeat the four Hamas battalions there would likely cost many more lives: of hostages, Israeli soldiers, and Palestinian civilians.

In a survey released Tuesday by the Israel Democracy Institute, a majority of Jewish Israelis, 56%, said a hostage deal should be a higher priority for Israel than a military action in Rafah, while 37% thought that military action should be higher.

Opinions differed significantly by political orientation. A large majority on the left (92.5%) and in the center (78%) prioritize a deal to release the hostages, while on the right 55% say military action in Rafah is the top priority.

Gilad Segal, a reservist who fought in Gaza before being demobilized, says he’s ready to go back to fight.

An attorney who lives in London, Mr. Segal was in Israel visiting family when the war started in October. He dropped everything to join his paratrooper brigade. If needed, he says by phone from London, he’ll return.

“Without going into Rafah we will lose this war, because we live in the Middle East,” he says. If he goes back to fight, he adds, he’d likely lose his London job. “But I wouldn’t like to lose my country,” he says. Mr. Segal, like others interviewed for this story, spoke before Hamas’ announcement on a cease-fire and Israel’s incursion into Rafah.

If the four battalions in Rafah are untouched, they could be “the incubator” for Hamas raising its head once again, warns Israel Ziv, a retired Israel Defense Forces general who earned national acclaim for his individual response organizing military resistance on Oct. 7.

The remaining Hamas battalions must indeed be dismantled, he says. But because Hamas will never let the more than 1 million Palestinians living and sheltering in Rafah to evacuate as it needs them as human shields, he says, the risks of a major Rafah operation would outweigh benefits due to the high civilian casualties it would entail.

Instead, Major General Ziv says, Israel should clinch the hostage deal, including a cease-fire, and set out a day-after-the-war plan for Gaza, together with moderate Arab allies and the U.S., that would ensure disarming Hamas.

Michael Milshtein, however, a former military intelligence officer who heads the Palestinian Studies Forum at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, supports entering Rafah, but only after prioritizing the release of all the hostages via a long-term cease-fire.

Dr. Milshtein says Israel should occupy Gaza and then cede control to a local administration made up of an alliance of “leaders, heads of professional associations, academia, prominent figures, which will be ready to take responsibility.”

In military ranks, caution

According to Amos Harel, defense analyst for Israel’s Haaretz daily, there has even been ambivalence toward a Rafah operation among Israeli military leaders.

The Israel Defense Forces will do what the politicians decide, but behind the scenes it was leaning toward a deal on the hostages, he says.

“They will be very careful about saying do not enter [Rafah] at all because ... they don’t want to appear too weak,” especially considering the tensions with members of the government over who is to blame for the failures of Oct. 7, he explains.

Any Rafah operation likely will be limited, possibly on the outskirts of the city, Mr. Harel says.

The outbreak of fighting in Rafah, even if limited so far, and the dire state of cease-fire negotiations weigh heavily on families of the remaining hostages and their supporters.

Ron Hantman, a website developer, says he spends every evening protesting with the families in Tel Aviv, armed with his megaphone.

For seven months Israel has tried to get back the hostages through military might, he says.

All this talk about entering Rafah and winning is a “masculine attempt to show that we are stronger,” he adds. “We don’t only have to be forceful; we have to be wise.”