The Debate Over Rafah

At the heart of the dispute between President Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu over invading Rafah is a larger disagreement about what Israel can reasonably hope to accomplish against Hamas.

In today’s newsletter, I’ll lay out the conflicting views of Biden and Netanyahu and summarize The Times’s latest coverage of the war.

Israel’s view

To Netanyahu and his aides, the destruction of Hamas is a vital goal. Israel’s military has already made progress, having dismantled at least 18 of Hamas’s 24 battalions since the Oct. 7 attacks. But Hamas’s top leaders and thousands of fighters have survived, many evidently fleeing to tunnels under Rafah.

Allowing a cornered enemy to escape violates basic precepts of military strategy, Israeli officials believe. “Ending the war without clearing out Rafah is like sending a firefighter to extinguish 80 percent of the fire,” Benny Gantz, a member of Israel’s war cabinet and Netanyahu’s chief political opponent, has told U.S. officials. The Wall Street Journal editorial board, which tends to support Netanyahu, has called Rafah “the crucial city for the terrorist group’s future.”

Israeli officials also know that many Arab leaders despise Hamas, viewing it as a threat to their own regimes. These leaders would be quietly happy for Israel to crush the group. Some Palestinians are also angry with Hamas (although public opinion in Gaza is difficult to gauge).

As loud as the international warnings about a Rafah invasion may be, Israel’s leaders believe that a successful operation there would change the strategic equation — and that they would then be able to negotiate from a position of strength with both Hamas’s remnants and Arab countries.