The quality of information on what is happening on the ground in Rafah thanks to the Israeli pogrom against journalists. Israel was fortunate that Rafah’s reporting was overshadowed by seemingly more important events: the prospect of ICC arrest warrants issued against Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant; Ireland, Norway and Spain announce their intention to recognize Palestine; and the death of Iranian President Raisi. However, we will risk an update.
A new Wall Street Journal article describes how far Israel has progressed in its plan to take control of the Rafah crossings into Egypt. Egypt says Israel has retaken 70% of what was previously a demilitarized zone; Israel says it only has about half of it (Anadolu Agency says its sources say half). Extract from the Journal:
The (Israeli) army has doubled the number of brigades operating in the Rafah region…
Israel says taking control of the corridor is key to achieving its goal of defeating the militant group it says is resisting Rafah… But it could jeopardize the country’s 45-year-old peace treaty with Egypt , which limits the number of troops at a time countries can deploy to the region. Israel’s Defense Ministry declined to say whether it wanted to take full control of the southern border or whether it had a timetable for doing so.
Israeli operations that began in Rafah earlier this month have also reduced the entry of aid through two key southern border crossings to a trickle and displaced some 800,000 people from Rafah, where more than a million had taken refuge to escape the fighting elsewhere in the strip.
A new Associated Press account reports the UN has given up delivering aid to Rafah:
The United Nations suspended food distribution in the southern Gaza town of Rafah on Tuesday due to a lack of supplies and an untenable security situation caused by Israel’s growing military operation. The UN has warned that humanitarian operations across the territory are on the verge of collapse…
The UN World Food Program said there was a shortage of food in central Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of people now live.
“Humanitarian operations in Gaza are on the verge of collapse,” said Abeer Etefa, WFP spokesperson. If food and other supplies do not start flowing into Gaza again “in massive quantities, famine-like conditions will spread,” she said.
But the same story notes that the Biden administration is bearing the collateral damage of the Rafah operation:
A senior US official said Israel had addressed many of the Biden administration’s concerns about a full-scale ground invasion of Rafah aimed at rooting out Hamas fighters there…
The official said the administration had not given the green light to Israel’s invasion plan, but said changes Israeli officials made to the plan suggested they were taking the U.S. administration’s concerns seriously. .
In case you still have doubts:
It’s Rafah right now. The Biden administrator will say this is a “limited operation” because he has previously expressed opposition to a “major” operation. The media will repeat this and say that Israel is responding to American “concerns.”
This is literally how propaganda works.pic.twitter.com/uGnc6UmzPO
– Assal Rad (@AssalRad) May 21, 2024
The reason Israel violated its agreements with Egypt was that this move would allow it to eliminate what remained of Hamas. Yet Hamas has reasserted itself in northern Gaza, so it seems doubtful that Israel could kill so many Hamas fighters in an operation in Rafah. However, Hamas has numerous supply tunnels to Egypt, and Israel intends to destroy them.
But the most immediate effect is a halt to humanitarian supplies being delivered by truck. From the Middle East:
The Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt has been closed for two weeks, after Israel seized the crossing in a ground operation and Cairo refused to open it on the Sinai side….
The Rafah crossing is located in a zone designated as demilitarized in the 1979 treaty and a 2005 agreement between Egypt and Israel.
The peace treaty and the 2005 agreement allow the deployment of troops in the crossing zone only after mutual agreement between the two parties….
Over the past two weeks, Israel and Egypt have traded responsibility for closing the Rafah crossing, and aid trucks carrying food and medical supplies for Palestinians in Gaza have piled up on the Egyptian side of the border.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said on Monday that the Rafah crossing was closed due to the presence of troops and operations near the terminal, which he said threatened the security of humanitarian convoys.
Israel accuses Egypt of not cooperating regarding the Rafah crossings, although it is not clear what this cooperation amounts to.
According to Twitter, Israel is having great success in destroying Hamas tunnels. But we heard this kind of thing during Israel’s first invasion of Gaza. Hamas is believed to have a simply gigantic network, so even if Israel blows up a number of them, it has no idea what proportion that represents of the total. Indeed, another Middle East Eye article describes how upset the United States is by Israel’s poor military performance:
The top US general on Monday criticized Israel’s military strategy in Gaza, warning that the failure of Israeli forces to secure captured territory and eliminate Hamas from northern Gaza is hampering its ability to achieve its military objectives.
“Not only do you have to go in and eliminate the adversary that you’re facing, but you also have to go in there, hold the territory and then stabilize it,” said Gen. Charles Brown, who chairs the Joint Chiefs of Staff . staff, as Politico reports…
Brown said that after Israel cleared, “they didn’t hold, which allows your opponent to repopulate the areas if you’re not there.”
Remember, this is coming from the same US military that thought the great Ukrainian counter-offensive, without air support, would be a resounding success because these inferior Slavs would flee as soon as they saw Western weapons in action.
Brown does not understand, or chooses not to understand, how the Hamas tunnel system works. As Alastair Crooke and Scott Ritter explained, many tunnels were built for single use and are even demolished afterwards. This is also an obvious ploy to trap them. The flattening of the buildings above them also served to create ideal terrain for surprise Hamas attacks and the rubble mitigated the effectiveness of attacks on the bunkers. So it’s not hard to imagine that Hamas still has a network of tunnels too deep for even the heaviest, most malicious bombs to collapse.
Nevertheless, many Israeli triumphalisms are visible:
The Israeli army has just sent its 5th brigade to Rafah.
That’s 10 brigades in Gaza as we speak, a record number of IDF troops since the start of the war.
What is this smell?
Oh, it’s the smell of the end of the genocidal Islamic terrorist organization we call Hamas.
Their end is near.… pic.twitter.com/Lyi5cyiKHy
– Hillel Fuld (@HilzFuld) May 22, 2024
Israeli forces eliminate 130 Hamas terrorists east of Rafah.
Hundreds of tunnel shafts and rocket launchers destroyed.
Hamas is having a bad day. pic.twitter.com/OvjLlxJ48H
– Hananya Naftali (@HananyaNaftali) May 20, 2024
– Egypt a month ago: ISRAEL MUST NOT ENTER RAFAH
– Israel enters Rafah, finds 700 tunnels, 50 of which cross to Egypt
– Egypt: uh… https://t.co/QWnxxzkOIw– The Mossad: satirical, but brilliant (@TheMossadIL) May 22, 2024
The Middle East Eye story cited above on food supplies confirms thatThe dock gimmick against aid deliveries is an abject failure:
According to U.S. officials, the new floating pier, which became operational Friday and called “Trident,” will facilitate the delivery of an additional 90 to 150 trucks daily to Gaza.
So far, only 10 trucks were transferred to a UN World Food Program warehouse in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza on Friday. The UN says 500 aid trucks are needed every day to meet the acute needs of Gaza, where famine is spreading.
“The jetty is more efficient than efficient and Rafah remains a critical piece of the puzzle to deliver sufficient aid and prevent a further deterioration of the already dire conditions on the ground,” Fabiani said.
No aid was received on Sunday or Monday, a UN official told Reuters, while only five trucks arrived at the warehouse on Saturday and 11 were stopped and emptied by hungry Palestinians on the way.
To give an overview of the desperate situation in Gaza, from the New Arab in Palestinians survive on 3% of their minimum daily water needs in Gaza:
Some Palestinians in the Gaza Strip survive on just 3% of the world’s minimum for daily water consumption, two humanitarian groups said, as the Israeli war has decimated the enclave’s water infrastructure.
The lack of clean water and sanitation facilities has led to an increase in illness and infections among Gaza’s civilian population, particularly among children, according to the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and Medical Aid to the Palestinians ( MAP)…
Deteriorating water, sanitation and hygiene conditions “have significantly increased acute watery diarrhea among children under five, while other waterborne communicable diseases, such as hepatitis, proliferate among families who cannot access sources of drinking water,” the report said.
Families have been forced to build their own toilets, and hundreds of people use just one, which is 30 times more than the minimum global standard, the IRC and MAP said….
A BBC satellite analysis earlier this month found that more than half of Gaza’s water treatment plants and sewage system have been damaged or destroyed by Israel’s intense aerial and ground bombardment.
For months, families were forced to spend hours lining up with plastic bottles and gallons at water tanks, then scrambling to ration supplies.
In other words, the Rafah operation appears to have the same primary effect as post-IDF initiatives: to intensify the pace of genocide. And in this respect, he succeeds admirably.
