ARAB AND WORLD

Thu 29 Feb 2024 2:26 pm - Jerusalem Time

Analysis| Netanyahu is promoting a victory that does not exist in Rafah

Ramzi Baroud, an American-Palestinian researcher, wrote an analytical article published by the American website “AntiWore” in which he points out that the Palestinian city of Rafah is not only older than Israel, but is also as old as civilization itself, as “Rafah has existed for thousands of years.” He pointed out The Canaanites called it Raphia, and Raphia was almost always there, guarding the southern borders of Palestine, ancient and modern.


The researcher points out that as the gateway between two continents and two worlds, Rafah was at the forefront of many foreign wars and invasions, from the ancient Egyptians to the Romans, to Napoleon and his ultimately defeated army. Now it is the turn of Benjamin Netanyahu, who has made Rafah the crown jewel of his shame, a battle that will determine the fate of the genocidal war he is waging in Gaza. In fact, his country's very future."


It is noteworthy that Netanyahu said in a press conference held on February 17: “Those who want to prevent us from working in Rafah are telling us: Lose the war.”


There are now between 1.3 and 1.5 million Palestinians in Rafah, an area that had a population of 200,000 before the war began. Even then, it was considered crowded. We can only imagine what the situation is like now, with hundreds of thousands of people spread out in muddy refugee camps, living in makeshift tents unable to withstand the harsh winter elements. The mayor of Rafah says that only 10 percent of the necessary food and water reaches the camp residents, as they suffer from extreme hunger, if not complete starvation.


“They have lost their loved ones and their homes, and cannot get any medical care. They are trapped between high walls, the sea and the deadly army.”


According to the researcher, the Israeli invasion of Rafah will not change the battlefield in favor of the occupation army, but it will be horrific for the displaced Palestinians, as the massacre in Rafah will exceed anything and everything we have seen so far anywhere in Gaza.


“Where will up to 1.5 million people go when Israeli tanks arrive? The closest so-called safe zone is Al-Mawasi, which is already overcrowded,” Baroud says. “The displaced refugees there are also suffering from starvation due to Israel’s prevention of aid access and the constant bombing of humanitarian convoys.” Then there is northern Gaza, “much of which is in ruins. It is so destitute of food that in some areas, animal feed, which humans now consume, is no longer obtainable.”


The writer says that if the international community does not ultimately develop the will to stop Israel, this horrific crime will be far worse than all the crimes already committed by the occupation forces. It is expected that more than 100,000 Palestinians will be killed or injured in Rafah alone.


“However, the invasion of Rafah promises neither a military nor a strategic victory for Israel, but merely a massacre. Netanyahu simply wants to indulge the bloodshed throughout the occupying state. Although their armed forces have killed thirty thousand Palestinians so far, and wounded another seventy thousand, the Israelis are still They still want more revenge.“I am personally proud of the devastation in Gaza,” Israeli Minister of Social Equality Mai Golan said during a Knesset session on February 21.


At the beginning of the war, Israel claimed that Hamas was based in northern Gaza. The North was duly destroyed, but resistance continued unabated. Then Israel claimed that the resistance headquarters was under Al-Shifa Hospital, and it was bombed, raided, and destroyed. Then it claimed that Al-Bureij, Al-Maghazi, and central Gaza were the major prizes of the war. Khan Yunis was then declared the "capital of Hamas." And so it went on...


The resistance was not defeated, and the so-called “Hamas capital” moved easily from one city to another, and even from one neighborhood to another.


And now the same ridiculous and baseless allegations are being made about Rafah, where Israel has ordered most Gazans to go, in complete desperation, if they want to survive the attack.


Israel hoped that the Palestinians would quickly leave Gaza in the hundreds of thousands and go to the Sinai desert. They didn't. Then Israeli leaders, such as far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, spoke of “voluntary immigration” as “the right humanitarian solution.” However, the Palestinians remained in place. Now the Israelis have agreed to invade Rafah; It is just a matter of time, in a final attempt to organize another Palestinian Nakba.


But another Nakba will not happen. The Palestinians will not allow this to happen.


“Ultimately, the political madness that Netanyahu and Israel are suffering must end. Moreover, the world must not continue its cowardly inaction. The lives of millions of Palestinians depend on our collective quest to stop this genocide immediately,” according to the writer.

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Analysis| Netanyahu is promoting a victory that does not exist in Rafah

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