Israel's Response to Iran's Attack Impacts the Legitimacy of an Operation in Rafah

Thursday's report in Al Araby Al-Jadeed, whose Egyptian sources have, to date, proven to be very reliable, may indicate the close connection between the two channels. According to an Egyptian source, Israel has already notified Egypt of its intention to conquer Rafah and has begun to attack open areas along the Philadelphi route separating the Gaza Strip from Egypt, where tunnels connecting Gaza to Sinai are suspected to exist.

The source was able to say that the plan rests on "dividing Rafah into four quarters, which will be conquered sequentially," so that the residents of each quarter will be forced, when their turn comes, to flee to the area of Khan Younis and Mawasi.

For its part, Egypt has apparent accepted the conquest of Rafah and is expediting preparations for absorbing the evacuees from it by building another tent camp in Khan Younis, in addition to the two camps already built and managed by the Egyptian Red Crescent, which can jointly house 11,000 dispossessed (a minuscule number compared with the expected number of fleeing people).

But the important piece of information in the report is that the U.S. has already granted its consent to the conquest of Rafah in exchange for a limited strike against Iran – apparently under an outline to be agreed between Washington and Jerusalem – thereby creating a trade-off between revenge in Iran and the conquest of Rafah, which is not based on real strategic needs or an orderly plan that could be expected to end the war, but based on an urgent need to contain and limit the consequences of unplanned actions.

The Palestinian Authority is waiting

It is commonly assumed the conquest of Hamas' last military stronghold will only happen after the holidays. But the Egyptians don't celebrate Passover; Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr are already behind them and Cairo is already preparing for the conquest of Rafah.

The news site Rai Alyoum reported this week that Egypt has deployed forces along the Egyptian side of the Philadelphi route and defined a "neutral zone" where displaced Gazans can go. According to the report, the zone is being readied to absorb 200,000 people and will have services, clinics, and food distribution points.

Egypt emphasized, however, that "no refugee may enter" its territory beyond the neutral zone. At the same time, Egyptian General Intelligence Directorate director Maj.-Gen. Abbas Kamel recently held talks with Palestinian General Intelligence Service director Majed Faraj on arrangements for managing the "neutral zone" and the Gaza side of Rafah border crossings. So far as is known, the Palestinian Authority, which has previously expressed its wish to manage the Rafah crossing and organize civil life (initially for humanitarian aid followed by all aspects of civilian life) has also commenced operations in the field.

The Palestinian Authority and Fatah leadership have denied the report, since it means that the Palestinian Authority is not waiting for the end of the war or diplomatic measures that would advance a two-state solution to begin operating in Gaza.

Until now, these two reservations were a fundamental condition for the Palestinian Authority to assume responsibility for managing Gaza. But in an interview with the Arab News Agency on Thursday, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' deputy as Fatah chairman, Mahmoud Al-Aloul, said that talks were underway between the Palestinian Authority and a group of Arab states, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, and Qatar to coordinate operations that would prevent the emigration of Gazans to Egypt.

Al-Aloul did not detail these operations, but his remarks indicate that they include the establishment of reasonable living conditions in Gaza to prevent a mass flight. "We are one people and we must not leave Gaza's residents in such conditions. For this purpose, we must invest every possible effort to support people's existence [i.e. to keep them in Gaza]. It is not enough to object to emigration, we must prevent a situation in which residents are living in unbearable hardship that would cause them to emigrate," he said.

On the face of it, these remarks confirm that the Palestinian Authority and Fatah leadership have apparently decided to relax their position on assuming responsibility in Gaza and not to wait for the war to end, because the threat of a conquest of Rafah requires urgent action.

Al-Aloul talks about coordination with Arab countries, but meanwhile it is not clear whether the Israeli government, especially Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is prepared to break the entrenched wall of resistance against transferring civilian control in Gaza to the Palestinian Authority. There have been no clear statements on this issue to date, even from ministers Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, who have made contradictory statements since December.

The objective: buying time

The way to realize the second basic condition, which requires international measures to advance a diplomatic solution that will rest on the two-state formula, should have paved the way to Thursday's UN Security Council's debate on recognition of a Palestinian state and its becoming a full member of the UN, rather than its current status as merely an observer. The proposal, which gained the support of 12 of the 15 members of the Security Council, was vetoed by the United States.

It seems that U.S. President Joe Biden, who gave new life to the two-state solution and raised expectations of an American initiative to advance it, has put it on the back burner for now. As U.S. Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield made clear this week, "We do not see that doing a resolution in the Security Council will necessarily get us to a place where we can find a two-state solution moving forward."

Biden's objective was to buy more time. Now that "Iran time" has lapsed and "Rafah time" has narrowed, the question is how it will be exploited to lay a proper foundation for managing Gaza during and after the conquest of Rafah.

In practical terms, even if the U.S. were to persuade or compel Israel to agree to the entry of the Palestinian Authority into Gaza, the question is what will be the structure for coordinating IDF and Palestinian Authority operations. Will Israel allow the Palestinian Authority to establish an armed police force that can initially safeguard the distribution of aid cargoes followed by regulating and managing the return of Gazans to their homes, and later a semblance of civilian life? Will Israel allow the Palestinian Authority to manage the Gaza side of the Rafah border crossing, as Egypt proposes?

Another issue relates to the financing that the Palestinian mechanisms will require. It can be assumed that the United Arab Emirates and possibly Saudi Arabia will agree to contribute their share of financing for the Palestinian Authority, albeit there is as yet no signed commitment to do so. But then Israel can be expected to demand that these funds will pass through it and not go directly to the Palestinian Authority, a condition that no donor country – Arab or Western – is likely to consent to. This package of questions should have already received practical and agreed upon answers. In their absence, and on the basis of the new strategic experiment, the field will dictate the answers.