Following Israel’s rescue mission of two hostages carried out in Rafah, the IDF is poised to launch a ground incursion into the same city. Rafah is Hamas’s last remaining stronghold; it must be purged from that area for Israel to realize its war aims.
Preventing a repeat of the horrors of October 7 will require Israel to maintain control of the Rafah crossing in perpetuity.
If ordered, the IDF will operate in an area where approximately 1.2 million Gazans are currently located. They are there as a result of Israel’s largely successful efforts to move Gazans out of harm’s way as the IDF battles a brutal enemy.
Egypt's responsibility
Gazans are hemmed in between Israel’s military offensive in Khan Yunis and Egypt, whose president refuses to allow the Gazan population into the Sinai Peninsula, the huge land expanse that abuts the Gaza Strip.
Egypt bears massive responsibility for the unfolding crisis. For years, it turned a blind eye to the smuggling of personnel, material, and terrorist know-how into Gaza through Sinai.
It is from Egyptian territory, via Sinai, that terrorists returned to Gaza after undergoing military training in Syria, Iraq, and Iran. October 7 happened when the seeping complicity of Egypt burst forth in the bloodiest rampage against Jews since the Holocaust.
Egypt now invokes the potential for regional upheaval to demand that the IDF not operate in Rafah. Having failed to uphold its obligations in territory over which it is sovereign, Egypt now seeks to dictate the terms of activities in areas over which it has no sovereignty.
If only Egypt had been as judicious in the past in preventing what crossed from Sinai into Gaza as it now is about what crosses from Gaza into Sinai. Jordan, the UAE, France, and Britain are echoing Egypt’s demands. Where does the hypocrisy end?
The international community typically reacts to displaced populations with the inventiveness of a middling pugilist. Their diplomatic one-two leads with a call for neighboring and non-neighboring countries to accept them as refugees and then follows up by championing the countries that do so.
Egypt's refusal to accept Gazan refugees
SINCE THE beginning of the Syrian civil war, bordering Turkey is estimated to have absorbed more than 3.5 million Syrians. Non-bordering Germany accepted 1.2 million Syrians. Both countries were implored to do so and applauded thereafter.
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, responsibility for absorbing displaced Ukrainians again fell upon bordering states, including Poland, and non-bordering countries, such as Britain, America, and Israel. Again, the international community implored those countries to do so and applauded them thereafter. The old one-two.
But in a move away from international norms, the countries that typically urge population absorption now assign no absorption responsibility to Egypt and insist that where other displaced populations may seek to emigrate, no such notion has ever crossed the minds of the Gazans.
Not only has Egypt refused to open its border, but it has deployed some 40 tanks to the area, presumably in readiness to gun down any of the Gazans whom it and the world claim to care for so deeply in the event that they cross into its territory.
Shifting to an unorthodox stance, the international community is now violating its own standards because this war features an unfamiliar regional contender – an Israel that is actually seeking a conclusive victory!
Desperate to prevent that outcome, the world now flails to tie Israel up using techniques of astounding illogic. They assert that Syrians may want to flee their brutal reality. So might Ukrainians. But Palestinians? No! Uniquely, Palestinians want to stay where they are, immiserated by the Hamas regime that they voted into power, displaced by Israel’s legitimate response to the attack launched against it.
Some 250,000 Israelis have been driven from their homes by Iranian-backed Hezbollah and Iranian-backed Hamas in Gaza. In the latter case, Egypt was the bridge that connected murderous intent with murderous deeds.
Israel must advance. Asked to choose between a displacement crisis in Gaza or perpetuating the worsening displacement crisis unfolding within its own borders, it must first safely repatriate Israelis who are living as evacuees within their own country, beginning with those from Israel’s south. For that to be achieved, Hamas can and must be cleared from Rafah.
WHILE EGYPT is centrally responsible for the displacement of the Gazans and eminently equipped to resolve the issue, primary responsibility rests with the Gazan people themselves.
Many distinctions exist between the crises in Syria and Ukraine and the events taking place in Gaza. The most telling of those is that while Syrians did not elect President Bashar Al-Assad and Ukrainians did not elect President Vladimir Putin, Gazan voters willfully cast their ballot in support of the regime that launched the war in which they are now entangled – Hamas!
Gazans lent an electoral mandate to the known genocidal intentions that are at the heart of the Hamas charter. That genocide was attempted on October 7. When dead IDF soldiers and elderly abductees were dragged into Gaza, mass civilian celebration erupted on the streets. Jew hatred, violence, and murderous intent still coarse through the veins of too many Gazans. Now Israel is responding.
For too long, the cooperation between Egypt and Hamas has remained hidden; whispered about but rarely spoken aloud.
The future of Egypt and Hamas
But it’s time for their partnership to be outed. Whether Gazans and Egyptians want each other or not, the international community should consummate a union between them. Egypt should be pressed to allow Gazans into the Sinai - against its preference - with at least the same vigor that Israel was compelled to funnel aid into the Strip against the Israeli will. The result should also be the same.
Israel must press forward, undeterred by bluster, in pursuit of its highest calling - the defense of its own people and the return of its hostages.
Israelis were murdered and abducted during the holiest, most festive period of the Jewish calendar. If it does not protect that which is sacred to it, others will trample upon and desecrate those values. Perhaps an IDF armed with the determination exhibited to this point can return the children of Israel to their homes in time for this year’s Passover. They’ve been in the wilderness of displacement, torment, and kidnap for far too long.
The writer is a co-founder and CEO of The MirYam Institute and an IDF combat veteran.
