Cease-fire talks stumble as Rafah assault looms
What happened
As cease-fire talks between Israel and Hamas continued, the Israeli military this week submitted a plan to the Israeli war cabinet for a ground assault on the southern city of Rafah, where some 1.5 million displaced Palestinians are sheltering. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was determined to wipe out the remaining Hamas command centers in the tunnels under the city. But Rafah is the only point of entry for aid to Gaza, and aid agencies said invading it would be catastrophic. A 2-month-old baby in Gaza City died of hunger this week, and more than half a million more Palestinians are at risk of starvation. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said an assault on Rafah would be “the nail in the coffin” for Gaza.
President Biden raised hopes that the invasion would be delayed or averted, saying he was optimistic that a cease-fire deal would soon be reached. Negotiators from the U.S., Israel, Qatar, and Egypt met in Paris and Qatar this week to discuss such a deal, which would involve trading 40 Israeli hostages for 400 Palestinian prisoners. Biden said Israel had agreed in principle to halt fighting during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which starts March 10. But Hamas said a deal was not close, while Netanyahu said that even if a temporary cease-fire is reached, the Rafah invasion will proceed as soon as it ends. He also said Israeli forces would remain in Gaza as long as necessary to fully disarm Hamas, so that the Palestinian militant group could not launch another attack like the Oct. 7 massacre that started the war.
What the columnists said
Netanyahu’s plan for after the war is “a blanket rejection of any solutions that empower the Palestinians,” said Ishaan Tharoor in The Washington Post. He’s opposed to the Palestinian Authority taking over in Gaza—even as the PA leadership resigned this week to show its willingness to reform—and opposed to any discussion of a Palestinian state. He even announced new Israeli settlements in the West Bank, right after the Biden administration changed U.S. policy and called such settlements illegal.
Biden’s proposals are worse, said Seth Cropsey in National Review. His “grand bargain” envisions a Palestinian state in return for an Israel-Saudi rapprochement—effectively rewarding Palestinians for Hamas’ murder spree. Netanyahu is right that eliminating Hamas completely as a military threat is Israel’s only option. The most likely result of the Biden administration’s “faux shuttle diplomacy” isn’t “a stable settlement, but a rupture between Israel and America.”
We now have “a toxic combination of thousands of civilian casualties and a Netanyahu peace plan that promises only endless occupation,” said Thomas Friedman in The New York Times. The sympathy given to Israel in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attack is being replaced by rage. Yet Netanyahu, facing numerous corruption trials, appears “ready to sacrifice Israel’s hard-won international legitimacy” so he can stay in power. As the world watches Palestinian children get blown apart by U.S.-supplied weapons, America’s global standing may “plummet right along with Israel’s.”