Egypt already informed
Israel is probably planning a sensitive operation at the Rafah border crossing
January 13, 2024, 8:52 p.m
The southern end of the Gaza Strip is largely out of reach of Israeli ground forces in their operation against Hamas. That could change soon: the military is apparently planning to advance to the Rafah border crossing. Nothing has been decided yet, the project could become tricky.
According to a report in the US newspaper “Wall Street Journal”, Israel is considering an extremely sensitive army deployment directly on the Gaza Strip’s border with Egypt. “Israeli officials have informed Egypt that they are planning a military operation along the Gaza side of the border,” the paper wrote, citing unnamed Israeli and Egyptian sources.
A few weeks after Hamas’ attack on southern Israel on October 7, which left 1,200 dead, Israeli ground troops moved deep into the Gaza Strip to dismantle Hamas’ military infrastructure. The southern end of the coastal area, which borders Egypt with the divided city of Rafah and the border crossing of the same name, is so far out of reach of Israeli ground troops.
The Rafah border crossing is controlled by Egyptian and Palestinian officials, with the latter being under the control of Hamas. This is a thorn in the side of the Israeli leadership, which suspects that tunnels that run under the border between Egypt and Gaza are still used to smuggle goods and weapons for Hamas.
An Israeli military operation, as is currently being considered, “would likely mean removing Palestinian officials from the strategically important border crossing,” the Wall Street Journal continued. Israeli forces would therefore occupy a strip of land approximately twelve kilometers long, stretching from the border triangle between Israel, Gaza and Egypt to the Mediterranean coast.
The plan has not yet been approved by the Israeli government, the report says. It is extremely sensitive because there are hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians in Rafah and the surrounding area who were forced to leave their homes in the central and northern Gaza Strip on the orders of the Israeli military. Cairo also has strong reservations about the project.