Excellent information about what is happening on the ground in Rafah, thanks to the pogrom against journalists by Israel. Israel has the good fortune of having Rafah’s coverage crowded out by what appears to be a much larger event. An ICC arrest warrant could be issued for Prime Minister Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Ireland, Norway and Spain have announced their intention to recognize Palestine. and the death of Iranian President Raisi. Still, the update puts you at risk.
A recent Wall Street Journal article reports on how far Israel has come in its plans to seize the Rafah border crossing into Egypt. Egypt claims that Israel has taken over 70% of the area that was demilitarized, while Israel claims that it has only taken about half of it.Anadolu Agency cites sources saying the number is half). From the journal:
The (Israeli) army has doubled the number of brigades operating in the Rafah area…
Israel says seizing the corridor is essential to its goal of defeating extremist groups it claims are resisting in Rafah…but doing so would leave Egypt with 45 years of limited military capacity in both countries. Countries that could potentially jeopardize the country’s peace treaty with Egypt could deploy to the region. Israel’s Ministry of Defense declined to comment on whether it aims to fully control the southern frontier or whether it has a timeline for doing so.
The Israeli military operation that began in Rafah earlier this month has also slightly reduced the influx of aid from two key southern border crossings, with more than 1 million people displaced from fighting elsewhere in the Rafah area. Approximately 800,000 people were evacuated from Rafah.
A new account from the Associated Press reported The UN has given up on delivering aid to Rafah.:
The United Nations on Tuesday suspended food distribution in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, citing supply shortages and an untenable security situation due to the expanding Israeli military operation. The UN warned that humanitarian operations across the territory were close to collapse…
The United Nations’ World Food Program said food was in short supply in central Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of people currently live.
“The humanitarian operation in Gaza is close to collapse,” said WFP spokeswoman Abeer Etefa. If mass flows of food and other supplies do not resume in Gaza, “famine-like conditions will spread,” she said.
However, the same article points out that the Biden administration is unfazed by the collateral damage from Operation Rafah.
A senior U.S. official said Israel had addressed many of the Biden administration’s concerns about a full-scale ground invasion of Rafah aimed at rooting out Hamas fighters…
The official said the administration had stopped short of giving the green light to a plan to invade Israel, but the change in plans by Israeli officials suggested it was taking Washington’s concerns seriously.
If you are still in doubt, try this:
This is Rapha now. The Biden administration will call this a “limited operation,” as it has already expressed opposition to “large-scale” operations. The media will repeat this and tell us that Israel is addressing America’s “concerns.”
Literally, propaganda works like this.pic.twitter.com/uGnc6UmzPO
— Assal Rad (@AssalRad) May 21, 2024
Israel’s justification for doing so in violation of its agreement with Egypt was that the move would enable it to destroy the remaining Hamas forces. However, Hamas has reasserted itself in northern Gaza, and it seems doubtful that Israel would be able to kill all of those many Hamas fighters in Operation Rafah. However, Hamas is known to have numerous supply tunnels to Egypt, and Israel intends to destroy them.
But the most immediate impact has been the halt to deliveries of aid by truck. From a Middle Eastern Perspective:
Gaza’s Rafah border with Egypt has been closed for two weeks after Israel seized the terminal in a ground operation and Cairo refused to open it from the Sinai side.
The Rafah checkpoint is located in an area designated as a demilitarized zone by a 1979 treaty and a 2005 agreement between Egypt and Israel.
The peace treaty and the 2005 agreement allow for the deployment of troops at border crossings only with the consent of both parties…
Over the past two weeks, Israel and Egypt have traded responsibility for the closure of the Rafah crossing, which has seen aid trucks carrying food and medicine for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip pile up on the Egyptian side of the border.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said on Monday that the Rafah crossing was closed due to military presence and operations near the terminal, threatening the safety of aid convoys.
Israel has accused Egypt of not cooperating on the Rafah border crossing, but it is unclear the extent of that cooperation.
According to Twitter, Israel has had great success in destroying Hamas tunnels. But we heard things like that when Israel first invaded Gaza. Hamas is believed to simply have a huge network, so even if Israel were to blow up a significant number, there is no telling what proportion of the total it would be. Indeed, another Middle East Eye account explains how the United States is troubled by Israel’s poor military attitude:
America’s highest-ranking general criticized Israel’s military strategy in Gaza on Monday, saying the failure of Israeli forces to both secure captured territory and dislodge Hamas from northern Gaza has hampered its ability to achieve its military objectives. I warned you that
Gen. Charles Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, “Not only do we have to go in and eliminate whoever the adversary is, we have to go in and hold the territory and then stabilize it.” Politico reported that the number of staff members…
Brown said Israel “made it clear that they were not holding on, so if you’re not there, the enemy can repopulate the area.”
Remember, this is coming from the same US military that thought a major Ukrainian counterattack without air support would be a huge success because the inferior Slavs would flee as soon as they saw Western weapons in action.
Brown does not understand or chooses not to understand how Hamas’s tunnel system works. As both Alastair Crook and Scott Ritter explained, many of the tunnels are built for one-off use and may even be demolished afterwards. This is also an obvious ploy to booby-trap them. Flattening the buildings above it also helps create the perfect terrain for Hamas’s surprise attacks, and the rubble makes bunker busters less effective. So it’s not hard to imagine that Hamas remains with a network of tunnels so deep that even the heaviest and nastiest bombs cannot disintegrate them.
Nevertheless, many displays of Israeli victory are on display.
The Israel Defense Forces just sent the 5th Brigade to Rafah.
This means that there are now 10 brigades in Gaza, the record number of IDF soldiers since the war began.
What’s that smell?
Ah, this smells like the end of the genocidal Islamic terrorist organization called Hamas.
Their end is near… pic.twitter.com/Lyi5cyiKHy
— Hillel Fuld (@HilzFuld) May 22, 2024
Israeli forces kill 130 Hamas terrorists in eastern Rafah.
Hundreds of tunnel shafts and rocket launchers were destroyed.
Hamas is having a bad day. pic.twitter.com/OvjLlxJ48H
— Hananya Naftali (@hananyaNaftali) May 20, 2024
– Egypt, 1 month ago: Israel should not enter Rafah
– Israel enters Rafah and discovers 700 tunnels, 50 of which enter Egypt
– Egypt: Hmmmm… https://t.co/QWnxxzkOIw— Mossad: Satirical but brilliant (@TheMossadIL) May 22, 2024
The Middle East Eye article on food supplies cited above states:The gimmick to deliver aid supplies is a complete failure.:
The new floating dock, called “Trident,” which began operation on Friday, will help transport an additional 90 to 150 trucks to Gaza each day, U.S. officials said.
So far, only 10 truckloads of food have been delivered to the United Nations World Food Program’s warehouse in Deir al-Bala, central Gaza, on Friday. The United Nations says 500 truckloads of aid are needed each day to meet the dire needs of Gaza, where hunger is widespread.
“The pier is more functional than effective and Rafa remains a vital piece of the puzzle to deliver sufficient aid and avoid a further deterioration of an already dire situation on the ground,” Fabiani said.
A U.N. official told Reuters that no aid was received on Sunday or Monday, and that only five trucks arrived at the warehouse on Saturday, with 11 stopped en route by starving Palestinians and left empty. Became.
To provide context from the New Arab world about how desperate the situation in Gaza is. Palestinians in the Gaza Strip survive on just 3% of their daily water needs:
Some Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are living on just 3% of the world’s lowest daily water usage standard, two humanitarian organizations say, as the enclave’s water infrastructure has been destroyed by Israel’s war. .
According to the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and Palestinian Medical Aid (MAP), a lack of clean water and sanitation has led to increased illness and infections among Gaza’s civilians, especially children.
The report found that poor water, sanitation and hygiene conditions have led to “a significant increase in acute watery diarrhea among children under five years of age, and an increase in the incidence of other water-borne diseases such as hepatitis in households without access to clean water sources.” “is widespread,” he said.
According to IRC and MAP, households are forced to build their own toilets, and each toilet is used by hundreds of people – 30 times the global minimum standard.
A BBC satellite analysis earlier this month found that more than half of the Gaza Strip’s water treatment plants and sewage systems have been damaged or destroyed by intense Israeli aerial and ground bombardment.
For months, families have been forced to line up for hours at water tanks with bottles and gallons, then struggle to ration supplies.
In other words, Operation Rafah appears to be having the same main effect as the IDF’s post-withdrawal efforts: quickening the pace of genocide. And in that sense, it has been a spectacular success.
