Approximately 900,000 Palestinians have fled from Rafah this month following the Israeli military evacuation orders for parts of the city earlier this month.
Israel’s military called for residents in eastern Rafah to evacuate on May 6, after Hamas launched a deadly attack from Rafah near the Kerem Shalom border crossing, which is the primary entry point for desperately needed humanitarian aid. The Hamas attack seemingly prompted the evacuation order after months of discussion between the Biden administration and Israeli leaders over a possible Rafah invasion.
The Israel Defense Forces have carried out “more targeted and limited” operations in the densely populated Gaza City along its border with Egypt over the course of this month, according to national security adviser Jake Sullivan, who had been among the U.S. officials who warned in recent weeks about the potential for significant civilian casualties if Israel did not take extensive precautions for the more than one million people who had fled to Rafah.
“What we have seen so far in terms of Israel’s military operations in that area has been more targeted and limited, [and] has not involved major military operations into the heart of dense urban areas,” he stated. “We now have to see what unfolds from here.”
Sullivan told reporters there was “no mathematical formula” for calculating the severity of Israel’s campaign in Rafah, though he added, “What we’re going to be looking at is whether there is a lot of death and destruction from this operation, or if it is more precise and proportional.”
“It’s fair to say that the Israelis have updated their plans. They’ve incorporated many of the concerns that we have expressed,” a senior official said, according to the Times of Israel. The official stopped short of fully endorsing the IDF’s offensive.
Seth Frantzman, an adjunct professor fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the Washington Examiner that many of those fears were “unfounded.”
“It appears now that much of the fearmongering about an IDF operation in Rafah was done to try to keep the civilians there so that Hamas could use them as human shields. This was a cynical attempt to keep Hamas in power and to help it hide the tunnels that it has under Rafah,” he said. “The U.S. consistently said they wanted the IDF to present a plan for evacuating Rafah and also what might come next. It appears now that the IDF was well prepared for precision operations against terrorism in Rafah, and that the method the IDF has used of calling on people to evacuate is systematically successful.”
Israeli officials had maintained for months that it had to carry out full-scale operations to achieve its goal of destroying Hamas. Israel’s military began operations in northern Gaza and slowly moved its way south conducting a north-to-south sweep of the strip. The only major population center left for Israeli forces in their sweep is in Rafah, which is a Hamas stronghold.
Hamas has tunnels that travel from Rafah into Egypt, which allows them to smuggle goods into the strip, Frantzman explained, describing the city as “a faucet that Hamas can turn on and off to control the whole of Gaza.”
“Removing Hamas from control of the aid and weapons that are in tunnels in Rafah, will weaken Hamas and potentially cause its downfall,” he added.
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Israeli leaders had said for months it needed to carry out full-scale military operations in Rafah to defeat the remaining in-tact Hamas battalions, though the U.S., several western countries, and humanitarian organizations warned about the possibility that such operations could incur scores of civilian casualties.
President Joe Biden threatened to condition future military aid to Israel over their proposed full-scale invasion of Rafah and his administration held up one military aid shipment that contained thousands of heavy bombs that can cause significant damage, especially in a densely populated area.