Rafah and Riyadh: Defeating Hamas is essential for normalization - analysis

Israel faces several challenges almost seven months into the war in Gaza. Hamas is still not defeated, and international pressure on Israel is growing. A recent column at The New York Times suggested that “Israel has a choice to make: Rafah or Riyadh.” This is what columnist Thomas Friedman argues. “US officials tell me that if Israel does mount a major military operation in Rafah, over the administration’s objections, President Biden would consider restricting certain arms sales to Israel.” The article also claims that Saudi Arabia and other Arab states could agree to an Arab peacekeeping force in Gaza. “Israel’s long-term interests are in Riyadh, not Rafah,” the article concludes.

Currently, Israel continues to fight Hamas almost seven months after one of the worst terror attacks in history which led to the largest mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust. However, the war in Gaza has not been fought with the urgency that one would think that a response to such mass murder would entail. Instead, Israel has approached the war on Hamas with slow, cautious operations of campaigns in Gaza in the past, and Hamas continues to thrive in Gaza.

Now, most of the focus has moved to Rafah, the southern city in Gaza along the Egyptian border that is controlled by Hamas. It is believed Hamas has several “battalions” of fighters there and that it uses Rafah to control aid entering Gaza and also uses it to smuggle weapons. Many Gazans who fled fighting in the north in October and November are now displaced in Rafah. Any Israeli operation in Rafah is now under the international spotlight and Israel has been encouraged to refrain from an operation there or to at least help the civilians move out of the way.

 The assertion that Israel should end the war in Gaza, withdraw, and set its sights on normalization with Riyadh would appear to indicate that Israel should basically give up on security for its citizens and its border in exchange for normalization with Saudi Arabia. This is a strange theory. Most countries don’t sacrifice security for peace, and there is no evidence that giving up on security on the Gaza border will bring peace. If it was true that giving up on securing the Gaza border would bring peace, then how does one explain the lack of peace on October 6.

In October, Israel left the Gaza border relatively undefended and trusted that Hamas was deterred, a message conveyed to Israel repeatedly over the last years. Hamas is hosted by US major non-NATO ally Qatar and apparently the US, Qatar and others thought Hamas was not going to do anything against Israel. READ MORE