"All eyes on Rafah." That meme kept getting posted by people on my social media a couple of weeks ago. It was in response to Israeli airstrike on the Tel al-Sultan neighborhood targeting Yassin Rabia and Khaled Nagar, two senior Hamas officers that were responsible for carrying out terror attacks. Unfortunately, the strike also hit a fuel tank nearby that caused the deaths of 45 Palestinian civilians. It was the most deadly strike since the Rafah offensive started. While there has been third-party analysis, the incident is still under investigation. As such, I do not want to get into the particulars of the incident at this time or jump the gun like much of the media did with the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital explosion in which it turns out the Palestinians were responsible.
What I will say is that incident reminded me of an important aspect of this conflict: the Palestinians got really good at playing the victim card. People reacted adversely to Tel al-Sultan strike because what they see is suffering women and children in a burning camp. No one wants to see that sort of suffering. Rafah has been turned into a war zone. To quote the media outlet Spiked:
But who did this? Who was it that decided to use this former city of civilians as a launchpad for war? Who was it that posted their military commanders there, hid their ammunition there, fired their missiles from there, [and] dragged hostages there? Who was it who hid the machinery of war among the women and children of Rafah, knowing full well bloodshed would ensue?
It was not Israel. Israel was busy evacuating over 900,000 civilians because Israel has done its utmost to minimize civilian casualties, which is tricky in urban warfare. It was Hamas who did this and was responsible. Hamas has a penchant for using its own citizens as human shields and storing military assets in civilian infrastructure, much like it did when it was using an UNRWA school as a military compound that was recently attacked. As the offensive in Ramah reminds us, Hamas maximizes civilian casualties as a part of its strategy, thereby showing no regard for its own citizens.
You cannot separate Hamas from the rest of Gaza or Palestine, as much as some pro-Palestinian activists would like to do. Hamas is not some separate entity that forced its will upon an otherwise peace-loving people. Hamas was voted into power in 2005. Hamas became the ruling government in Gaza as of 2007 and has de facto been the ruling government ever since.
Palestinians are not protesting the Hamas regime. I bring this up because protest, rebellion, or revolution are acts that many citizens in authoritarian regimes have performed throughout history when they are fed up with the existing regime, even risking their incarceration or death to do so. Gazans are generally content with their current government, which is evident from Palestinian survey data from the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research has shown and continues to show. These survey data also show that most Palestinians do not have a qualm with violence towards Jews and the death of Jews.
Yes, war is brutal. I would rather have a scenario in which diplomacy worked out better. War comes with considerable economic costs and death. A price of war is casualties. If that were truly unpalatable to the Palestinians, maybe they should not have broken the ceasefire and incited the war by raping, kidnapping, torturing, murdering, and decapitating Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023. Or at the very least, they could end the war by releasing the hostages instead of prolonging the war by using them as a bargaining chip.
Shortly after the October 7 attacks, Hamas leadership stated that they would like to carry out those atrocities again and again. Hamas' hatred for Jews and warmongering are not new. It dates back to its founding in late 1987. Read the original Hamas Charter, especially the Introduction and Article 7, where the Charter specifies wiping out Jews. What is worth reminding people of is that Arabs wanting to wipe out Israel predates Hamas' existence.
The following sequence of events dates back to 1948: Arab nations attack Israel, Israel retaliates, Israel wins, and the leaders of Arab nations cry foul because Arab culture is an honor-based culture in which Jews have historically been viewed as second-class citizens vis-à-vis the dhimmi (ذمي) status (you can also check out Surat 2:61, 5:64, and 5:78 in the Qu'ran). The Arabs have always rejected a two-state solution because they have wanted all the land in the Middle East and still want all the land. This animus has not existed for a few years or decades, but can be traced back centuries. While there are many complicated aspects of the Middle Eastern conflict, that simple undercurrent has been a constant in the Arab approach to the modern state of Israel since its establishment in 1948.
But what about all the heinous crimes that Israel is committing? Shouldn't the Palestinians resist the atrocities of the alleged "Zionist aggressor?" Those are questions I can address for the next Part of this series.
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