As Israel steps up operations in Rafah, a city in southern Gaza, what remains of the militant group that it’s trying to wipe out?
The narrow strip of land that is Gaza is getting narrower by the day.
Rafah, a city that has become a refuge for Palestinians fleeing the bombs of Israel, is being suffocated.
Hundreds of thousands of people have fled Rafah, although nowhere in the strip is safe. The UN says the city is on the brink of famine.
Aid is stuck at the border. The main hospital has been abandoned.
Israel is ramping up its assault against Rafah, which it insists is necessary to root out Hamas.
Joe Biden has said that the US will not support a major operation against Rafah. Biden has already withheld some bombs.
“I made it clear that if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah.”
Despite pressure from the US, and the desperate humanitarian concerns, Benjamin Netanyahu is defiant.
“If we need to stand alone, we will stand alone. I have said that, if necessary, we will fight with fingernails. But we have much more than fingernails. And with that same strength of spirit, with God’s help, together, we will win.”
Netanyahu claims that Rafah is the last Hamas stronghold in Gaza.
But is this true?
Israel has killed over 35,000 Palestinians in the seven months of the Gaza invasion, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. Of those identified by the UN, more than half of women and children.
There is no agreed estimate on how many are Hamas fighters.
Back in February, the Israeli army said that it killed 12,000 Hamas militants out of an estimated 30,000 in the Gaza strip. Hamas claimed that its death toll was half of that.
Either way, Hamas is still a significant fighting force in the strip.
Some commanders have been killed, but the very top brass – including Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas in Gaza, and his deputy Mohammed Deif, commander of Hamas’s military wing – are still alive.
Their whereabouts are unclear.
Israel says that they are targeting four Hamas battalions that are hiding out in Rafah. But their whereabouts are unclear too.
Unnamed officials told one of Israel’s daily newspapers that there are, in fact, no longer four battalions in Rafah, with many fighters moving to the nearby Khan Yunis.
Meanwhile, Israeli troops are fighting again in northern Gaza, where Hamas appears to have reassembled.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s war aims are maximalist: total victory over Hamas. It doesn’t appear that a ground operation in Rafah would achieve that. Innocent lives will be lost, and US support could wane.
“They may go in and have some initial success but potentially at an incredibly high cost to civilians. They will be left holding the bag on an enduring insurgency because a lot of armed Hamas will be left no matter what they do in Rafah.”
Antony Blinken
Over the weekend, Israel’s military chief of staff reportedly told Netanyahu that without a diplomatic process, Israel would, “have to launch campaigns again and again in other places to dismantle Hamas’s infrastructure. It will be a Sisyphean task.”
Targeting Hamas has turned into a deadly game of whack-a-mole.
But many Hamas fighters are content to remain below the surface, out of reach, for as long as it takes.
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Today’s episode was written and mixed by Xavier Greenwood.
