After a long delay, apparently caused at least in part by opposition from the Biden Administration, Israel has finally begun to attack the Hamas stronghold of Rafah. The move on Rafah was, or should have been, inevitable: Israel can only win the war if it crushes Hamas, and it can’t do that without attacking the terrorist organization’s final redoubt. To me, it seemed that the delay in going into Rafah was a mistake. Israel’s offensive lost momentum, and its enemies had time to regroup and plan new strategy. But Netanyahu’s administration is weighing many factors that are unknown to the rest of us.
As soon as Israel issued instructions to inhabitants of Rafah to move to a safer location, evidently in preparation for an attack, Hamas pretended to accept the terms that Israel had offered for a cease fire. It was a typical Hamas ploy, intended to sow confusion and score political points. And it seems to have worked to a considerable degree. Not only has Joe Biden again called Netanyahu to repeat his opposition to a move on Rafah, but various parties are scrambling to analyze offers and counter-offers to evaluate the significance of Hamas’s purported acceptance of Israel’s terms–an acceptance which is obviously fictitious. Gazans, meanwhile, are lighting fireworks and celebrating in the streets.
That isn’t the worst of it, as Israelis, including families of hostages held in Gaza, are blocking roads and otherwise demonstrating in support of a demand that Israel’s government accept Hamas’s terms.
Hamas is in the same situation as pretty much every party that is losing a war and wants the fighting to stop. There is a clear path to a cease fire: all Hamas needs to do is surrender and put down its arms. For reasons I can’t explain, international pressure is entirely on Israel, the victim of the October 7 massacres and the winner of the ensuing war, to give up its war aims, rather than on Gaza to surrender. This is a perverse response to which Israel, and only Israel, is subject.
In my opinion, Israel should rapidly pursue the war to a successful conclusion, killing all Hamas fighters who do not surrender and imprisoning those who do. The IDF will of course try to minimize civilian casualties, but they are up against Hamas’s strategic goal of maximizing casualties. And in any event, in Gaza it is often hard to tell who is a “fighter” and who is a civilian. Whatever happens, all casualties on both sides are exclusively the fault of Hamas and its civilian Gazan supporters, i.e., a majority of Gaza’s population.
Finally, an absurd coda was added to all of these events when reporters asked Kamala Harris to comment on Hamas’s purported acceptance of Israel’s cease fire terms. To be blunt, the woman is an idiot:
“Shrimp and grits.” Momentous events are occurring, and Harris hasn’t a clue, and obviously isn’t in the loop.
