MARK ALMOND: Israel is being drawn right into a lure by Hamas

The metropolis of Rafah, on the southern finish of the Gaza Strip, is perhaps essentially the most densely populated place on Earth proper now.

Five months in the past, earlier than the bloody atrocities dedicated by Hamas terrorists on October 7 and Israel‘s enraged response, town was already overflowing with folks.

Since then its inhabitants of round 280,000 has elevated five-fold to virtually 1.5 million, crammed into 23 sq. miles. Refugees reside ten to a room, if they’re fortunate sufficient to have shelter in any respect. Most are on the streets.

Medication, gasoline, meals and water are in desperately quick provide, and what little exists is ruthlessly managed by the Hamas felony community.

It can also be a terrorist stronghold. If Israel is to wipe out the leaders of this fanatical Islamist hate cult, Israel Defence Forces (IDF) troops should assault Rafah.

The price in civilian lives might be heavy. And the fee to Israel may very well be catastrophic, too, if Western governments withdraw their more and more equivocal help.

Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is underneath immense stress throughout the nation to complete off Hamas. But if he assaults Rafah, he might be falling right into a lure.

The psychopathic Palestinian warlords are blissful to see ladies and kids slaughtered, as a result of they assume it will provoke an avalanche of Arab rage that can lastly wipe Israel off the map.

Israel, then, is going through a hatred-filled enemy prepared to make use of human shields.

This has shut and unsettling parallels to the destruction of Berlin or Dresden in Germany on the finish of World War II: one Hitler’s capital, the opposite a army transport hub, with stunning baroque structure housing numberless refugees.

Stalin’s Red Army fought its technique to Hitler’s bunker whereas the RAF razed a lot of Dresden to the bottom in a sequence of firebomb raids, killing some 25,000 civilians. The Allies had been deeply divided over this tactic, and historians nonetheless argue over its morality.

Nazism posed a worldwide risk. By distinction, many see the struggle in Gaza as nasty however native. Yet Israelis, residing underneath the shadow of the Holocaust, recognise Hamas as a mortal risk, and one with robust native help.

That’s why, for many Israelis, debate is pointless. They know that if Hamas is just not crushed, their nation is doomed.

This is a struggle of survival. The October 7 bloodbath was so steeped in evil that Israelis are justified in believing the terrorists wish to see each Jew die like that: raped, burned alive, dismembered.

Until October, Netanyahu was broadly seen by voters as a paranoid and corrupt politico clinging to energy to keep away from jail. But because the Hamas rampage, most Israelis blame him for not being robust sufficient on Palestinian violence.

Hamas strategists guessed that their atrocities would draw Netanyahu right into a lure. Israel would hit again exhausting, however its Western allies would get chilly toes about civilian casualties. Our leaders held their nerve whereas the IDF invaded from the coast and the north of the Gaza Strip, an space roughly the acreage of the Isle of Wight, 25 miles lengthy and as little as seven miles throughout at some factors. But the West is now shedding its abdomen for this marketing campaign.

Already, most of the 29,000 killed — in keeping with Hamas’s unreliable figures — have been non-combatants. In Gaza City to the north, each different constructing is reported to be destroyed. Bordered on one facet by the Mediterranean, with all flights out banned and with residents unable to flee into neighbouring Israel, many had no selection however to trek south to Rafah.

Once in Rafah, they will flee no additional. Egypt has shut its slim border, fearing a large inflow of Hamas fighters amongst any refugees, risking an Islamist rebellion in Egypt that can overthrow the regime of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

So what on earth to do?

In this worldwide disaster, every nation is considering first of its personal priorities.

In the U.S., President Biden’s workforce are all-too aware of the forthcoming election in November.

The pro-Israel foyer within the U.S. is historically highly effective and the Jewish voters tends to again the Democrats — however the rising variety of Muslim-American voters might flip essential swing states towards the incumbent.

Here, Labour is present process its most severe inner disaster since Keir Starmer took over, with the hard-Left demanding its MPs again an instantaneous ‘ceasefire’ — a euphemism for Israeli give up.

Dozens of Labour councillors have resigned from the celebration in protest at its nuanced place on Palestine.

On Britain’s streets, and throughout the West, a whole lot of hundreds of marchers have been shouting inflammatory and infrequently anti-Semitic slogans for months. A radical sub-culture is spreading, with race hate at its core.

The disgraced former Labour candidate within the Rochdale parliamentary by-election peddled obscene conspiracy theories that Israel inspired the Hamas bloodbath, and that each one the Islamic world is underneath assault by Jews.

Incredibly, this week, the viewers in a London theatre hounded out a Jewish man who refused to cheer the Palestine flag. They had been whipped up by the comic on stage, shouting ‘Get out’ and ‘Free Palestine’. That is a scene redolent of Berlin within the Nineteen Thirties.

My concern is that, despite the fact that the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza is finally Hamas’s fault — in spite of everything, the terrorists provoked Israel’s counter-attack — Netanyahu’s ferocious response has since performed into his enemy’s fingers. International courts are contemplating expenses of ‘genocide’ towards the Israeli authorities and army. Already, a Dutch court docket has blocked the export of spare elements for the Israeli airforce.

Friends of Israel, like our Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron, have begun to stress Jerusalem to simply accept ‘an instantaneous pause within the preventing’ — a well mannered phrase for a ceasefire.

But Netanyahu exhibits no signal of responding to such appeals. Indeed, he and his generals seem decided to hold on in any respect prices. Which begs the query: what would represent an Israeli victory?

After all, even when the IDF does reach capturing or killing the chief of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, and his fighters, this might then depart them with the issue of what to do with the 1.5 million embittered Palestinians left to ponder a depressing future within the devastated Gaza.

Faced with an identical quandary within the closing months of World War II, the Allies opted for a technique of successful hearts and minds — distributing medicines and restoring water provides in western Germany even earlier than Berlin lastly surrendered, after which funding a large restructuring programme through the Marshall Plan.

In the identical manner, the world’s greatest hope now is perhaps a deeply counter-intuitive one. If Netanyahu reverses his blockade of help and lets humanitarian reduction pour into Gaza — meals, water, medication, gasoline — he would possibly persuade Palestinians that Hamas is their mortal enemy, not Israel.

Yes, a rump of Hamas terrorists would possibly seize most of the help lorries. Those who want this treasured cargo most, the ladies and kids, could get little.

But it is going to be an essential gesture for Israel to say: ‘We don’t hate all Palestinians — solely our enemies who wish to kill us.’ Such slim hopes are one of the best we’ve got — and it’ll take essentially the most dexterous statesmanship, in addition to army planning, to avert a number of recent catastrophes.

Mark Almond is director of the Crisis Research Institute, Oxford.