The armed convoy of jeeps filled with journalists entered the dusty town of Rafah, passing flattened homes and dilapidated apartment buildings.
As we climbed out of our Humvees, a hush fell over this part of southern Gaza, near the border with Egypt. Concrete slabs and twisted rebar dotted the devastated landscape. Kittens scurried through the rubble.
The once bustling streets were now a maze of rubble. Everyone had disappeared.
More than a million people have fled the Israeli offensive that began two months ago. Many have been displaced multiple times and now live in refugee camps. Tent cities stretching for mileswhere they face an uncertain future as they mourn the loss of loved ones.
As Israel announces the end of its operation against Hamas in Rafah, the Israeli army has invited foreign journalists to visit the city under surveillance. The army claims to have fought with precision and restraint the Hamas fighters entrenched in civilian areas.
But the death, destruction and mass displacement of civilians has left Israel increasingly diplomatically isolated.
According to the Gaza Health Ministry, more than 38,000 Palestinians have died in the conflict. While the figure does not distinguish between civilians and Hamas fighters, it includes dozens of deaths in May, when Israel fired tear gas canisters at civilians. a pair of 250-pound bombs in a tent camp in Rafah.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put the Palestinian death toll at around 30,000. and say that about half were civilians.
The Israeli invasion was intended to destroy Hamas and free its hostages. So far, it has failed to achieve this goal.
According to army figures, at least 900 members of the Hamas brigade in Rafah and 15,000 Hamas fighters were killed.
But three months later Mr Netanyahu said “total victory is within reach” The army acknowledges that the siege of Rafah eliminated only a third of the Hamas brigade. The Hamas leadership remains intact. It is estimated that there are about 120 hostages somewhere in Gaza, although a third of them are believed to be dead.
Palestinians who fled the city have no idea when they will return and what they will find when they do. Marwan Shaath, 57, said he and his family left behind their three-story home. “It was supposed to be the family home for generations to come,” he said in an interview. His friends sent him photos of what remains. “It is badly damaged. Half of it is already destroyed. There are no walls, no windows, and large parts have been burned.”
The fighting in Rafah was intense, Israeli officials said, with Hamas setting hundreds of booby traps. Officials showed us a video showing a house equipped with 200-liter drinking water tanks filled with remote-controlled explosives.
On Friday, the Israeli military said it had killed dozens of Hamas fighters in Rafah, and Col. Yair Zuckerman, commander of the Nahal infantry brigade fighting in Rafah, taunted his Hamas counterpart as he briefed us.
“Where is the commander of the Rafah Brigade?” he asked.
The army supervised our visit to Rafah. We had to stay with the convoy, but Israeli authorities did not monitor or censor our work. A Hamas representative did not respond to text messages seeking comment.
We saw the outskirts of a neighborhood torn apart by the fighting. We could clearly see where Israeli forces had entered Rafah from the south, breaking up corridors for their tanks and troops. The air was thick with sand and fine debris.
Artillery, fighter jets and bulldozers flattened buildings or smashed them to pieces. From where we stood, the scale was incalculable, even though it was measured by satellitesWe saw dozens of aid trucks, but it was impossible to assess the relief efforts, which the United Nations has criticized as woefully inadequate.
Israel has accused Hamas of using Palestinians as human shields, positioning rocket launchers near schools and building tunnels under crowded neighborhoods, including Rafah.
The military showed us photos of cameras positioned around a neighborhood that officials said allowed Hamas to monitor Israeli forces and plan attacks against them. Israeli soldiers said they found Hamas combat kits scattered throughout many homes, as well as sophisticated weapons such as Russian-made surface-to-air missiles.
Israeli officials argue that such tactics justify fighting in sometimes crowded neighborhoods where Hamas fighters hide and store their weapons.
But Hamas’s guerrilla tactics also reflect an imbalance of power between a sophisticated army and a militia that relies on smuggled weapons.
According to Israeli officials, much of this smuggling takes place not far from where we were, at the Rafah border crossing and in the tunnels leading to Egypt. Stopping the flow of weapons was a major reason for the Israeli operation in Rafah. Israeli officials have described these smuggling routes as Hamas’s “oxygen.”
Despite a long-standing Israeli blockade and a Egyptian campaign To stop the clandestine smuggling, the Israeli military spokesman told us that soldiers had discovered tunnels along the border, without specifying their number. It is not known how many of these tunnels were in operation before the war began.
“A lot of terrorist infrastructure has been built close to the border,” said Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the military’s chief spokesman.
Just over a football field from the border, the military led us to a manhole that leads to a tunnel connecting two damaged houses. The destruction of these tunnels can be devastating for the buildings above.
“We are ordinary people living on the surface of the ground,” Mr. Shaath said. “I don’t know what’s happening underground, and what’s happening is not my fault as a civilian.”
More than two dozen Israeli soldiers have been killed in fighting in southern Gaza, including eight in the last month. in an explosion In Rafah, it was one of the deadliest attacks on Israeli soldiers since the start of the ground invasion of Gaza. During our stay, Israeli sniper fire broke out from time to time.
Israeli officials have identified Nearly 700 soldiers have been killed since the October 7 terror attacks, when Hamas-led gunmen stormed Israel, taking hostages and killing civilians, including women and children. Authorities say about 1,200 people were killed that day.
One of them was Col. Jonathan Steinberg, the former commander of Nahal. A few hours after his death, Col. Zuckerman replaced him. He told us that he and his troops intended to finish the job in Rafah.
We got into the jeeps and drove to another nearby spot, with a view of the rest of Rafah stretching out to the sea. Admiral Hagari climbed to the top of a small sand hill.
He pointed to Tal al-Sultan, another neighborhood in Rafah. There, he said, hostages were being held. A small group of Americans might be among them.
To free them, he said, would require rescue operations or military pressure.
“We will bring back the hostages,” he told us. “Any of your countries would do the same thing after October 7.”
