KIBBUTZ MAGEN, Israel | The border of Gaza today is green and farm equipment tills the fields on Israel’s side of the border.
The pastoral scene is a stark change from just four months ago, when the area was deserted in the wake of the Oct. 7 by rampaging Hamas militants, and many of the Jewish communities along the border were full of death and devastation.
But the sense of unease and foreboding will be harder to extinguish, for from Kibbutz Magen one can clearly see Rafah, the Gaza city along the Egyptian border that is the focal point both for a looming Israeli offensive and a frantic international diplomatic effort to head off more Palestinian civilian deaths, more bloodshed on both sides and more weeks and months of fighting.
Last week from this border site, a dozen Israel Defense Forces helicopters could be seen hovering along the border. One of them, an Apache, fired a missile from high in the air towards a building in Gaza. The strike was just the latest evidence that fighting is still happening not just in Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have take refuge, but in Khan Younis, as well, the larger city in the north of the densely populated enclave.
Despite intense efforts by the Biden administration to forge a cease-fire and forestall the coming battle, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made it clear again Saturday that the mission will continue so long as Hamas continue to resist and wields power inside Gaza.
“Those who want to prevent us from operating in Rafah are essentially telling us: ‘Lose the war.’ I won’t let that happen,” Mr. Netanyahu told a Saturday evening press conference in Jerusalem. “We won’t capitulate to any pressure.”
The Israeli leader said the Rafah offensive would commence after civilians have an opportunity to evacuate, but said he had told President Biden the offensive was coming.
“There is no alternative to total victory,” he said. “And there is no way to achieve total victory without destroying those battalions in Rafah, and we will do so.”
But the pressure on the Netanyahu government was building even as he spoke. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the other foreign ministers of the G-7 major industrial powers issued a statement Saturday explicitly expressing concern about the possibility of a catastrophe in Rafah.
The ministers “called for urgent action to address the catastrophic humanitarian crisis in Gaza, particularly the plight of 1.5 million civilians sheltering in Rafah and they expressed deep concern for the potentially devastating consequences on the civilian population of Israel’s further full-scale military operation in that area,” according to a statement released by Italy, which currently chairs the group.
A deceptive normalcy
The apparent normalcy here on the Israeli side of the border is deceptive. At Kibbutz Magen, around ten miles from the Egyptian border and two miles from the Gaza border, most of the residents still have not been able to return to their homes, living at the Dead Sea in hotels.
On a hill within the community, Gaza can be seen in the distance, including the border villages of Khirbat Ikhza’a and Khuza. It was from those two towns that thousands of Hamas fighters set off on October 7, breaching the fence between Gaza and Israel, and attacking communities like Magen.
Magen itself was spared a massacre because its local security team responded quickly and eliminated two dozen attackers from Gaza. The areas along the border are now under IDF control now, even as fighting rages across the border in cities across the Gaza Strip.
Hamas units continue to put up resistance in the south and top commanders such as local Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar remain at large, but IDF officials say that Hamas forces have been defeated in most of Khan Younis.
IDF Commanding Officer of the Southern Command, Maj. Gen. Yaron Finkelman late last week gave a situational assessment at the Nasser Hospital complex in Khan Younis. This hospital has been the center of IDF activities over the last week.
“The operation here in the city of Khan Yunis, in the heart of the city at the Nasser Hospital, is very significant,” the general said,”a precise, high-quality, focused operation, which so far has helped us apprehend dozens of terrorists, including murderous terrorists inside the hospital.”
The operation at the hospital was complex because there are 7,000 Palestinians sheltering in the area, according to Israel’s Ministry of Defense, which added that complex operation netted some 70 Hamas fighters.
The Hamas force that is bracing for Israel’s assault in Rafah will be a much weakened one after months of fighteing. When the war began Hamas had up to 30,000 fighters arranged in 24 battalions. More than half were in northern Gaza, where they were decimated by the IDF in fighting in November.
On Feb. 16 Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said his office now estimates 18 of the battalions — more than two-thirds — have been “dismantled.” That leaves Hamas only six major units left in Gaza, most of them in Rafah.
But the swollen Rafah population and the complication of some 100 Israeli and foreign national hostages still held by Hamas makes the coming campaign the most challenging of the war. Outside experts also question some Israeli claims about the extent to which Hamas’s operational control has been damaged by the fighting.
“We are thoroughly planning future operations in Rafah, which is a significant Hamas stronghold,” Mr. Gallant said. “Rafah is the next Hamas center of gravity.”
There were reports of riots Friday inside Rafah, and Egypt, which has adamantly refused to allow huge wave of Palestinian refugees to flee across the border into the Sinai, has been reinforcing its border while constructing a giant, walled enclave to detain those trying to escape the Gaza fighting.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, speaking at the weekend’s Munich Security Conference gathering in Germany, reiterated that the full-scale displacement of Gaza Palestinians to his country was unacceptable, but he hinted that even Cairo was not willing to stomach a wholesale killing of civilians as Israel and Hamas fighters battle in Rafah’s streets.
“It is not our intention to provide any safe areas or facilities, but if this is necessary we will deal with the humanity that is necessary,” Mr. Shoukry told the gathering.
Mr. Gallant sought to reassure Egypt, saying Israel “has no intention of evacuating Palestinian civilians to Egypt. We respect and value our peace agreement with Egypt, which is a cornerstone of stability in the region as well as an important partner.”
But that pledge only raises the stakes and the complication for Israeli military commanders. Moving into Rafah will require evacuating most of the civilians as Israel has done elsewhere during operations.
Israel has also shifted strategy slightly in Gaza over time. In northern Gaza the IDF carried out heavy airstrikes before the ground operation. In Khan Younis the operation was longer and less intense, using more elite infantry units, including paratroops and commandos.
Rafah will require another rethink because of the very different nature of the fighting and the grim fact that civilians caught in the crossfire will have far more limited options for seeking safety.
Life on the edge
On the border in Kibbutz Magen, the signs of life returning to normal, such as farming equipment operating on the border, made it seem like the war was far away. There was some heavy machine gun fire in the distance and a few outgoing rounds of artillery, but there was no sign of the massive fighting that had been common in November and December.
Nevertheless Israeli civilians are generally not returning to these communities. Around 200,000 Israelis were evacuated from 100 communities along the Gaza border and the northern border with Lebanon in October, where Israeli forces have traded salvos and attacks with Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite movement that, like Hamas, has close ties to Iran,
Driving from Magen to Sderot, a larger city where a large number of residents have returned to their homes, there is a slight uptick in civilian traffic from two months ago. Israeli authorities have invested in cleaning up the area, refurbishing signs and also painting the armored bus shelters that had been scenes of massacre on Oct. 7.
But there are other, grimmer signs, commemorating the victims who will never be returning home.
In the fields where there had been a large music festival on Oct. 7, hundreds of IDF soldiers gathered last week.
The soldiers are able to take some time off from the fighting because Israel has withdrawn many units from Gaza. However, they are ready for the next stage, if and when it begins.
• David R. Sands contributed to this report from Washington.