During his visit to Washington this week, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant made clear that an IDF operation in Rafah is crucial to the effort to destroy Hamas, whose leadership is hiding somewhere in that southern Gaza city’s tunnels. On Wednesday morning, Reshet Bet Radio reported that the Americans told the visiting DM that they wouldn’t stand in his way in Rafah, under some conditions.
Gallant arrived in the US with a security delegation which set off before Prime Minister Netanyahu announced he was canceling another delegation in protest of the US failure to veto an anti-Israel UNSC vote. So, while War Cabinet Minister Ron Dermer and NSA Tzachi Hanegbi, who are trusted by the PM, stay home, Gallant, whom the PM tried to sack last year, is representing the Israeli government in Washington.
In addition to convincing the Americans that moving on Rafah is the only way to bring the war to its proper ending, Galland and his delegation are also negotiating for the continued air train supply of much-needed arms and especially ammunition, as well as for long-term purchases, such as more F-35 warplanes.
The DM met with Secretaries Lloyd Austin (Defense) and Antony Blinken (State), as well as with CIA Director William Burns and Deputy Assistant to the President Amos Hochstein. These high-ranking officials reportedly repeated the administration’s magical mantra, that there is a better way to annihilate Hamas, without a direct onslaught; and the bizarre statement that attacking Rafah would not fortify Israeli security, it would make it weaker.
THE ATTACK ON RAFAH
But this time around, the Americans appear ready to accept an IDF attack that would conclude the six-month war on Gaza (and I, like you, now realize that back in 1967, it took the IDF six days to defeat three Arab countries). The Biden White House is only asking for one thing: make sure to remove more than a million civilians from Rafah before the IDF moves in.
You know, if the Allied forces in 1945 waited for the evacuation of Berlin’s civilians before closing in on Hitler’s bunker, WW2 would have ended in 1950.
Now, in her infamous “consequences” speech on Sunday, Vice President Kamala Harris announced, “I have studied the maps. There’s nowhere for those folks to go. We’re looking at about a million and a half people in Rafah who are there because they were told to go there, most of them.” So, where should Israel evacuate these people (if, indeed, the count is a million and a half – Arab counts are always inflated)? The Egyptians are threatening to shoot any Gazan who dares break through the enormous fortifications they have amassed along the border with the Strip.
Israel is proposing to build a tent city on the Mediterranean shore, where the IDF will care for the humanitarian needs of the evacuated civilians. One problem: to move a million or so people from Rafah to the beach would take weeks, maybe a month. Also, how would Israel stop Hamas leaders who will mingle with the civilians as they are doing today in Rafah and across the Gaza Strip?
BLINKEN’S MAGIC
The State Dept. released the following statement after Blinken’s meeting with Gallant on Monday:
“Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken met with the Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in Washington. The Secretary reiterated the United States’ support for ensuring the defeat of Hamas, including in Rafah, while reiterating opposition to a major ground operation in Rafah that would further jeopardize the welfare of the more than 1.4 million Palestinian civilians sheltering there.”
Then came the mantra, because on Monday they were still humming it:
“The Secretary underscored that alternatives exist to a major ground invasion that would both better ensure Israel’s security and protect Palestinian civilians. Secretary Blinken also discussed the need to immediately surge and sustain additional humanitarian assistance to meet the needs of civilians in Gaza.”
MILLER’S PLAN
On Tuesday, State Dept. Spokesman Matthew Miller was asked about an IDF attack on Rafah. Let’s look at his answer:
“First, in the areas in which it has operated, Israel has been somewhat successful in taking out the leadership of some of those Hamas battalions, and while you can replace fighters, ultimately the leaders are harder to replace, or at least takes more time… The initial people who might move up into a leadership role maybe don’t have the same experience that those who have been training for some time do, so Israel has been successful in taking out some of the leadership of the Hamas battalions and in taking out fighters, either by killing them on the battlefield or arresting them.”
So far, so good. Miller continued:
“So, it has degraded Hamas’s battalions outside of Rafah, and we believe in a military operation, hopefully in the way that we are suggesting, they could be successful in degrading those battalions in Rafah as well, and that’s something that we would support.
“That said … something that we have learned in our counterterrorism experience around the world is that while you can accomplish counterterrorism objectives on the battlefield, ultimately, when it comes to winning the larger battle, you have to offer a political path for the Palestinian people’s legitimate aspirations. And so, you have heard the Secretary make very clear that there needs to be a political path forward for a couple of reasons: one, because you have to offer that legitimate path to people; but two, because in order to have some other kind of security force in place to keep those Hamas battalions from reforming, you have to have a political solution. You have to have a political path forward.”
Are you sensing already what’s coming next? Miller concluded:
“So, for example, one of the possibilities is for the Palestinian Authority to offer policing and security on the ground with a trained-up force. Well, you have to have the PA operating in Gaza to be able to do that. And so, you have to have a political path forward to achieve that. So, we have made very clear that Israel’s ultimate long-term security objectives can only be accomplished not just through a military campaign but through some kind of political resolution with the Palestinian people.”
LET THE FAIRY DUST FLOW
All of which suggests that the administration has not given up its magical thinking, it only made it bigger and fancier. There are those trustworthy and dependable folks in the Palestinian Authority, you see, and based on their thirty years of encouraging terrorism in Judea and Samaria and inside Israel, we should trust them to control Hamas in Gaza – after Hamas has thrown their people from the rooftops back in 2007.
Yes, goes the American argument, the PA leadership is corrupt and tyrannical, but we will reform them. How? By training their security forces and turning them into state-of-the-art equipped, US-grade trained fighters. This will turn them into a law-abiding, not to say peace-loving army, ready to uphold the democratic values at the foundation of the Palestinian Authority.
Last Friday, a former member of Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s Presidential Guard, Majhad Mansur, executed the military skills he had acquired in a training camp in Jordan, from the world’s finest trainers, US Army personnel. A professional sharpshooter, Mansur engaged IDF forces for five hours, hopping between the four posts he had established under the cover of darkness – just as he had been taught. He managed to kill one IDF soldier and wound six others before a helicopter finally took him out with a missile.
The Biden administration is hoping to train whole battalions and post them along Israel’s borders, and they will be as able and murderous as Majhad Mansur. Yes, the Americans have lost their minds.
It can’t be helped. Wherever you start untangling the Biden ball of yarn a cloud of fairy dust bursts out. They are hell-bent on removing Israel’s democratically elected leadership while supporting a failed, terrorist regime in Ramallah that hasn’t held a presidential election in close to twenty years.
The only antidote to Biden’s and Blinken’s madness is a quick and resolute IDF takeover of Rafah, the execution of all remaining Hamas soldiers and commanders, and a steadfast blocking of any administration attempt to impose PA rule on Gaza. Anything short of that could mean the end of the Jewish State.
