Slaughter in Rafah

The slaughter in Rafah and Israel’s moral nadir

Israel is massacring Palestinians — and undermining its own security in the process.

by Zack Beauchamp

On Sunday, an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza city of Rafah ignited a fire that killed dozens of civilians. The carnage was horrific even by the bloody standards set by Israel’s war: An emergency doctor on the ground told NPR that it was “one of the most horrific massacres to have occurred in recent days here in Rafah and across the Gaza Strip.”

The strike, and the world’s horrified reaction to it, underscored how disastrous Israel’s entire war has become. 

The war is disastrous first and foremost for the Palestinian people. Tens of thousands are dead — an accurate death count is currently impossible — and many others are suffering immensely from injuries, lack of food, and inadequate health care. It is a humanitarian nightmare on an unimaginable scale. 

But it is also an increasingly obvious disaster for Israel, whose current government of right-wing fanatics have pushed a self-defeating approach to the war that damages Israel’s long-term prospects for security and stability.

At this point, the Gaza war is best described as a form of murder-suicide: one in which Israel slaughters Palestinians while raising the chances of its own long-term destruction. 

This is a nightmare, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is showing no signs of rethinking the approach that created it. The only responsible thing for Israel’s partners to do now is try and force them to change course. The Biden administration has set a “red line” for Israeli mass killing in Rafah that would trigger a cutoff of some aid; it is time for them to begin enforcing it.

Murder

The Israeli line is that the weekend’s horror in Rafah was an accident. The airstrike, intended to kill two Hamas officials, hit something flammable (perhaps a fuel canister) that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) did not know was in the area. This secondary explosion, and not the initial bomb, set off the fire that burned children alive.

“[We used] the smallest munition we can put on our planes,” IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari told reporters. “Our munition alone would not have ignited a fire of this size. Something else ignited the fire.”

This account may or may not be true: The IDF’s investigations into itself are not especially trustworthy. But even assuming the Israeli account is true, it’s still damning.

For most of the war, as Gazans faced an indiscriminate Israeli barrage in other populated areas, Rafah is the place that they fled to. In the past three weeks, nearly a million Palestinians have fled their former refuge, fearing airstrikes like the one over the weekend. Yet hundreds of thousands still remain, either unable or unwilling to be displaced (again).

In such a chaotic and dense area, even the most cautious war would kill many innocents. When refugees are literally carrying gas canisters around with them, it’s inevitable that one will be in the wrong place at the wrong time. As we’ve seen throughout the war in Gaza, there is no way to fight a major offensive in a place like Rafah without the kind of atrocity we saw this weekend happening at scale.

This was the logic behind the Biden administration’s so-called “red line:” that any major Israeli incursion into Rafah would trigger a suspension of American military assistance. Team Biden claims that Israel’s war plan in Rafah was limited enough to avoid a breach, but that the strike this Sunday may have constituted a violation.

Today, Israeli tanks are entering the heart of the city. If Israel hasn’t already crossed America’s stated red line, it raises the question as to whether any such line exists.

While the Biden team considers, Gaza’s humanitarian crisis is deepening. And more children will soon be burned alive.

Suicide

According to both the law and morality of armed conflict, any military action that poses a large-scale risk to civilian life faces an immense burden of justification. The Israeli argument — that Rafah is Hamas’s largest remaining base of operations — is not good enough.

We have seen previously that Israel has cleared areas of Hamas fighters, like al-Shifa hospital, only for them to return after the IDF moved on. There is substantial evidence that Hamas is recruiting thousands of new fighters during the war, making up for many of its tactical losses. 

Nothing about the current conduct of the Rafah assault, or the war more broadly, suggests a change. At present, the current war seems unlikely to yield a true strategic victory for Israel — meaning a durable, long-term improvement to the pre-war political status quo.

That’s not just the view of Israel’s critics, but also of many in its military leadership. About two weeks ago, the IDF establishment went into open revolt against Netanyahu’s approach to the war. The crux of the critique was that the prime minister had no plans for a post-war settlement and hence no means to translate the war’s short-term benefits into long-term gains.

“Since October, I have been raising this issue consistently in the cabinet and have received no response,” Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on May 15. “The end of the military campaign must come together with political action. The ‘day after Hamas’ will only be achieved with Palestinian entities taking control of Gaza, accompanied by international actors, establishing a governing alternative to Hamas’s rule.”

On May 19, National Unity party leader Benny Gantz — a member of Israel’s war cabinet and the overwhelming favorite to be its next prime minister — issued an ultimatum to Netanyahu. Either he develops an international postwar plan along the lines discussed by Gallant, or Gantz departs the war cabinet on June 8.

The reason for this extraordinary threat was straightforward: Gantz believes that Israel is on the verge of disaster, and only extraordinary action could avert it.

“A small minority took over the bridge of the Israeli ship and is sailing it toward a wall of rocks,” Gantz said. “Crucial decisions were not made. The acts of leadership needed to guarantee victory were not made.”

It’s easy to see what he’s worried about.

Internationally, the war is devastating Israel’s support even among its traditional Western partners. After the Rafah slaughter, French and German leaders issued condemnations of Israel’s behavior. The United States has already blocked some aid, and it is currently considering cutting off more.

Meanwhile, Israel’s offensive may actually be strengthening Hamas’s political position even as it devastates its military assets. Pre-war Palestinian polling showed that Fatah, the moderate faction in power in the West Bank, was more popular with Palestinians than Hamas — 26 percent political support for Fatah versus 22 percent for Hamas. Today, those numbers are flipped: a recent poll found 34 percent support for Hamas versus 17 percent for Fatah.

Israel’s war isn’t just failing to accomplish its objectives. It is actually weakening two of the most important pillars of the Jewish state’s long-term survival: international support and Palestinian belief in the possibility for coexistence.

In a recent article, the Palestinian human rights activist Mahmoud Mushtaha reflects on how the war is making his work impossible. 

“I’m constantly engaged in conversations about coexistence and reconciliation. But Israel’s actions against Palestinians consistently undermine what I am advocating,” he writes. “How can I convince a child who has lost every member of their family to accept the killer as a neighbor?”

Israel’s current leadership has shown itself incapable of heeding Mushtaha’s words. The Biden administration still can.