Just Evacuate Rafah
There’s a clear and obvious answer to the humanitarian worries President Biden is trying to blackmail Israel with as a full-scale Rafah invasion looms: Simply let Israel fully evacuate civilians from the Palestinian city and leave behind Hamas and its battalions.
So why on earth isn’t the president demanding that of Hamas leadership, instead of threatening to cut off arms to Israel?
Yes, there are logistical problems. If Israel were to oversee such an evacuation, Hamas might well engage in one of its ugly trademarks: firing on and attempting to kill or otherwise interfere with those trying to leave.
We saw the monstrous philosophy in action this week, with Hamas firing on the Kerem Shalom crossing once it was opened to aid flows.
Then there’s Egypt’s refusal to take any Palestinian refugees. But if Biden were not busily courting the pro-Hamas vote, he could well crack the whip over Cairo on that issue.
Don’t forget that the line between Hamas and the Gaza civilian population is blurry; like most terrorist groups, it hides among civilians and counts some civilians as semi-members and supporters.
As for the canard that a mass evacuation of Rafah would lead to permanent displacement of its citizens at the hands of Israel, it’s transparent nonsense. It is in Israel’s best and immediate interest to have a settled population of Palestinian civilians free from Hamas; why would its government stand in the way of that happening?
At least 110,000 civilians have already fled since Monday, per UN estimates, which is around 10% of the estimated population of refugees. It’s time to let the rest go as well.
The usual global suspects are, of course, screeching that even the merest thought of evacuating Rafah amounts to a war crime on Israel’s part.
And this is, of course, exactly backward. The danger to Palestinian civilians here comes from Hamas’ tactical playbook, which sees them as no more than bullet shields.
The situation in Rafah points out, yet again, that the world’s only Jewish state is held to a different and much higher standard when it comes to warfighting. One that, in this case, will cause unthinkable suffering among the very people Weepy Joe claims to be so concerned about.