GNITN - Special Edition

Israel At War – Day 218

Day After Plan Needs To Be Made

Is Sinwar In Rafah?

According to a report seen in The Times Of Israel Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar isn’t in Rafah as once believed:

Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar is not hiding in Rafah, two officials familiar with the matter told The Times of Israel on Friday, as the Israel Defense Forces moves to expand its operations in Gaza’s southernmost city.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has elevated a potential IDF operation in Rafah to the top of his public agenda, with the targeting of Hamas’s leadership believed to still be a major Israeli war aim as well.

The IDF has had some success on this front, killing Hamas military wing deputy commander Marwan Issa — considered the terror group’s No. 3 leader in Gaza — along with other senior commanders in recent months. But Sinwar and his deputy — military wing chief Mohammed Deif — have remained elusive, despite repeated claims by Israeli officials that the IDF was closing in on them.

So where is Sinwar? The report gives us one opinion:

The two officials speaking to The Times of Israel were unable to say with certainty where Sinwar is currently located, but they cited recent intelligence assessments that placed the Hamas leader in underground tunnels in the Khan Younis area, some five miles north of Rafah.

A third official — an Israeli one — asserted that Sinwar is still in Gaza.

If Israel is making one of the reasons for going into Rafah to capture or kill Sinwar, knowing where he actually is would be important:

Israel has made eliminating Sinwar a key element of its goal to destroy Hamas. In February, the IDF released footage of what it said was Sinwar walking through a tunnel with several family members, the first time he was apparently spotted since going into hiding before the devastating October 7 onslaught he’s accused of orchestrating, triggering the ongoing war in Gaza.

IDF ground forces began operating in Rafah on Monday, launching a targeted operation in the eastern part of the city aimed at taking over the Gaza side of the border crossing with Egypt. The security cabinet voted Thursday to approve a measured expansion of the Rafah operation in what is aimed at remaining within the scope of what Washington is willing to accept.

Losing American Support

We continue reading from the Times article and as we’ve heard before, the United States doesn’t want Israel to carry out a major offensive in Rafah:

US President Joe Biden said he would stop sending certain offensive weapons to the IDF if Israel went forward with a major ground offensive in the population centers of the city where over one million Palestinians are sheltering. He already withheld a shipment of high payload bombs last week amid fears they’d be used in Rafah.

Netanyahu has pledged to launch a major offensive in Rafah for months, arguing that the operation is essential for defeating Hamas, which has four of its remaining six active battalions located in the city.

Does the United States know that many of those battalions have already moved back to the north? Some think they have:

But one of the officials speaking to The Times of Israel said many Hamas fighters in Rafah have fled northward as Israeli threats of an invasion intensified in recent weeks.

While Israel says 18 of Hamas’s 24 battalions have been dismantled, the terror group’s fighters have managed to regroup and return to areas previously cleared by the IDF.

Having a plan for after the war may be contributing to Hamas assembling again in places they previously left:

The IDF was operating in the Gaza City neighborhood of Zeitoun this week for the third time since the war’s outbreak, with security officials warning that the IDF would be forced to continue playing this game of cat and mouse with Hamas until the Israeli government advances a viable alternative to Hamas rule.

Some think Israel needs to settle in Gaza again to stave off the game of hide and seek:

While much of the security establishment would like to see the Palestinian Authority — or at least Palestinians linked to the PA — fill the vacuums that the IDF is briefly creating through its operations throughout the Strip, Netanyahu has rejected the idea outright, as his far-right allies have pushed for Israel to permanently occupy the Strip and re-establish settlements there.

Without a concrete plan, the fighting so far may be wasted:

Absent a diplomatic strategy to compliment the military operations, many of the IDF’s achievements on the ground have been short-lived, the Israeli official told The Times of Israel.

A Heated Meeting

We read about a recent meeting with various security heads that got a little testy in an article from The Jerusalem Post:

During a meeting that discussed the issue of the day after the war in Gaza, an argument broke out between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) chief Ronen Bar, Channel 12 news reported on Saturday.

Based on quotes from the meeting, Bar began by saying, "We held a discussion with the Defense Minister, and this discussion took into consideration all the fronts in this war and all factors."

The PM wasn’t happy hearing that:

Netanyahu reportedly interrupted Bar, stating, "What?! You held strategic discussions with the Defense Minister?" Bar responded, "What is the question? Of course."

Netanyahu responded, "As far as I remember, the Shin Bet and the Mossad are subordinate to the prime minister."

Gallant spoke up:

At this point, Defense Minister Gallant intervened, telling Netanyahu, "Are you forbidding the Defense Minister from holding strategic discussions? Who exactly will do so, if not us?"

Then, Netanyahu told Gallant that "strategic discussions only take place here."

Gallant concluded by saying, "Every time you hold strategic discussions, we come prepared. It is my duty to hold discussions in order to be prepared. The problem is that you do not hold such discussions."

As we see in another article from The Times Of Jerusalem concerning the same meeting, the same issue of having a post-war plan in place will help the war now, the very same thing we heard from other sources above:

IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi tore into Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during security consultations this weekend for the failure to develop and declare a so-called “day after” strategy for who will rule Gaza after the war, according to Channel 13 news.

Apparently others in the government see things this way:

“We are now operating again in Jabaliya. As long as there isn’t a diplomatic move to develop a governing body in the Strip that isn’t Hamas, we’ll have to act again and again in other places to dismantle Hamas’s infrastructure,” Halevi is quoted as saying by the network. “It will be a Sisyphean task.”

The military prefers to have a plan in place to stabilize other parts of Gaza they already cleared out:

The report says other senior IDF officials urged political leaders to make decisions and formulate a strategy, without naming them. Additionally, cabinet members reportedly warned Netanyahu that Israel’s conduct and lack of decision-making in the past few weeks was “just risking lives.”

As many on the right in the government are wanting Israel to settle back in Gaza as a way to stabilize it at least for a time, I believe they should never have given away any of the land in the first place. Until Gazans can show they won’t vote in terrorists to lead them, it is the only feasible way to get peace once the fighting is over. And I also believe that all these nations in the United Nations who want to recognize a Palestinian state should let them have one on land they occupy. I wonder what their response would be to that? In my mind, God gave the Jews the land and it shouldn’t be divided up. Unfortunately, the true goal of these Palestinians is to occupy all of Israel and nothing will make them happy apart from that.