Six months after Oct. 7: Agonizing Rafah fight likely next stage for Israel-Hamas war
An agonizingly prolonged and politically treacherous campaign to root out Hamas’ militants in the Gazan city of Rafah is likely on the horizon for Israel — and potentially the final chance to secure the hostages’ release, experts told The Post on the six-month anniversary of the war.
About 1.2 million refugees fled to Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, when Israeli forces pounded Hamas strongholds in the north, according to United Nations estimates.
The influx has more than quintupled the prewar population of 250,000 in the 25-square mile area, worsening the misery of ordinary Gazans — and has provided cover for four remaining battalions of Hamas fighters, the IDF believes.
The coming Rafah assault represents the last hope for the 130 Israeli hostages still being held prisoner in Gaza, said Glenn Ignazio, a national security expert and former Air Force Special Operations commander.
“If they’re able to get through Rafah then the pressure is 100% on Hamas to release the hostages,” Ignazio said, explaining Israel then would cease their major military offensive in Gaza and the international community would turn on the terrorist group to free their captives.
“And then the biggest thing will be taking care of the Palestinian people that have been starving for so long.”
But outcry from allies over an accidental attack on aid workers this week and the already high Palestinian death toll will make Jerusalem’s coming operations “far more surgical and far more circumscribed” than its bombing campaigns against Khan Younis and Gaza City, said Bruce Hoffman of the Council on Foreign Relations.
“I don’t think they can bring the same airpower to bear in Rafah without causing thousands or tens of thousands more casualties, just because it’s so densely packed,” Hoffman said.
“It may prolong things, but Israel may be calculating…that more surgical and longer is better than continuing the status quo and estranging relations with the United States and other Western countries,” he added.
That density will likely force a painstaking fight relying heavily on precision drones and special operations ground forces, according to Hoffman.
The assault will likely start around Passover at the end of April, experts agreed, with several estimating the operation could last several weeks or months.
Israel sees the battle over Rafah to be critical to its long-term safety, as victory will mean a shutdown of the “Philadelphi corridor” — the strip of land along Gaza’s southern border that Hamas has used to import weapons through Egypt.
The operation will be “complex” for Israel — which is looking to take out a reported 5,000 to 8,000 Hamas militants in Rafah, according to Raphael Cohen of the Santa Monica, Calif.-based RAND research institute.
“Those thousands of [Hamas] fighters are not going to be clumped together in some totally discrete objective,” Cohen said. “That’s going to force you in a more direct ground operation.”
“It’s going to be, from a military standpoint…difficult to do this as a handful of precision drone strikes,” he added.
Jerusalem is unlikely to declare the war to be over until all the live hostages are released to Israel and senior Hamas leadership is either killed or captured, Cohen said, adding that achieving that goal could drag on for months, or even a year.
“While there are still live hostages, I have a hard time imagining this war officially ending,” he said.
Meanwhile, Iran will likely refrain from anything but token retaliation after some of its top military officials were killed in an Israeli airstrike on Damascus this week, the experts agreed — despite Tehran’s public vows of “revenge” and a welter of attacks on Israel from Iran-backed proxies like the Houthis in Yemen and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
“The seven people who were killed I very much doubt were in Damascus for tourism,” Cohen said. “The Iranians I don’t think really want a direct conflict right now.”
