The successful Israeli special forces raid to rescue two hostages from Rafah in the early hours of Monday morning is not the Rafah operation Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been talking up in recent days.
These are two very different operations in terms of scale, the type of military units involved and their objective. The big Rafah operation Netanyahu has been openly discussing will include entire brigades and last for weeks, if not months.
Yet despite his statements and the breathless headlines they generated, there's still very little, if any, sign on the ground of such an attack happening in the coming days.
The Israel Defense Forces' deployment in the Gaza Strip is the smallest it has been in over three months, with just five brigade combat teams who are mainly fighting in Khan Yunis. There are no signs of other brigades mustering near Rafah on Gaza's southern border. Nearly all the dozens of reserve battalions that took part in the previous stages of fighting have been demobilized and are now back home. One of the regular armored divisions has been sent to the northern border. The IDF is unlikely to launch a major Rafah operation while an entire division (four brigade combat teams) is still fighting deep in Khan Yunis.
An estimated 1.3 million Gazans – most of them refugees from northern areas of the Strip – are concentrated in and around Rafah. Unlike the previous Israeli advances into Gaza City and Khan Yunis, so far there have been no instructions for the local population to evacuate the prospective war zone. No leaflets dropped from the sky, no notifications by the IDF spokesperson, no mass text-messaging.
Israeli-Argentine hostage Fernando Simon Marman reuniting with loved ones at Sheba Medical Center, near Tel Aviv, on Monday.Credit: IDF/Reuters
More hostage rescue missions, based on accurate real-time intelligence, are possible. But if the IDF has the opportunity to conduct those, this would be further reason to postpone a bigger incursion into Rafah.
In Rafah's case, it wouldn't just be a major population movement that would need to precede any major ground offensive. There would also have to be a deconfliction mechanism with the Egyptian army, which is just over the border. From the anxious rhetoric coming from the Egyptian side, it doesn't look as if that is yet in place.
More hostage rescue missions, based on accurate real-time intelligence locating the hostages, are possible. But if the IDF has the opportunity to conduct those, this would be further reason to postpone a bigger incursion into Rafah.
So why were all eyes on Rafah even before Monday morning's raid? Because Netanyahu has been speaking about it. He brought it up first when, at a press conference last Wednesday, he said out of the blue that he had "instructed the IDF to operate in Rafah." Then on Friday, without any apparent reason, his office put out a statement that he had "ordered the IDF and the security establishment to submit to the cabinet a combined plan for evacuating the population and destroying the [Hamas] battalions" in Rafah.
Since then, he's given two interviews to American TV networks where he's repeated the necessity for Israel to operate in Rafah. From Netanyahu's words, it almost sounds as if he's the only one who's thought of conducting such an operation there.
This is, of course, ridiculous. The IDF has detailed plans for this maneuver. It has been part of the overall campaign from the beginning. Rafah is the third remaining major Hamas stronghold, dominating the crucial crossing and smuggling routes from Egypt. The army doesn't need Netanyahu to point this out for them.
A displaced Palestinian woman holding her son as she waits to get him examined by a doctor, outside a medical tent in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, on Sunday.Credit: Saleh Salem/Reuters
Why is he constantly bringing up Rafah if the operation isn't imminent? And even if it was, surely there would be no need to talk it up, inviting international pressure and giving Hamas more warning?
It's very hard to avoid the impression that Netanyahu's sudden flurry of Rafah-related threats has little to do with the reality on the ground and everything to do with his attempt to reinforce his latest spate of messaging to Israelis.
For the last three weeks, he has been trying to latch on to the public sentiment that's in favor of continuing the war against Hamas, promising "total victory." The messaging has become so blatant that his aides have even produced blue baseball caps with the slogan emblazoned on it.
But while the polls show that this is what Israelis want, they also show that they don't trust Netanyahu to deliver it. Four months into this war, that hasn't changed.
By specifying Rafah as a target, Netanyahu is trying to double down on the message, in a desperate attempt to convince Israelis that only he is determined enough to go all the way.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking during a press conference following the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday.Credit: PMO
Netanyahu has been trying to latch on to the public sentiment that's in favor of continuing the war, promising 'total victory.' The messaging has become so blatant that his aides produced blue baseball caps with the slogan emblazoned on it.
There is a second message here that Netanyahu isn't saying out loud, but is both being hinted at and whispered by his proxies: that his rivals in the war cabinet, Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, and the IDF General Staff, are all too hesitant, too defeatist, too focused on a "weak" hostage agreement to pursue the war until that "total victory."
Will this finally move the polling needle in Netanyahu's direction? All the other spin he's tried for the past four months has failed to do so. There's no sign that Israelis will find this any more convincing, but Netanyahu will persist with the Rafah rhetoric until he comes up with a new twist for his narrative.
The IDF isn't sending entire brigades into Rafah in the next few days. It may well take place in a few weeks or months, but it won't have any connection with Netanyahu's posturing. Besides, he now has a Rafah operation, even if it isn't the one he was talking about, and can move on to his next desperate spin.