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May 30, 2024

In Rafah, Israeli control means the residents get affordable food

By Andrea Widburg

In the past few days, Israel’s successful military action in Rafah wiped out members of Hamas’s senior leadership, revealed a massive network of tunnels leading into Egypt, and allowed Israel to control completely the border between Gaza and Egypt. Those are all Israeli wins, despite it losing a propaganda battle when a Hamas weapons supply exploded, killing several dozen civilians, something Hamas successfully blamed on Israel. But within Rafah, Israel might have won the biggest battle of all for hearts and minds because food prices are dropping.

Both the Biden administration and Egypt were absolutely opposed to Israel going into Rafah, the last major Hamas holdout. We can speculate as to the Biden administration’s motives, whether affinity for Hamas or Iran or just a desperate need to keep its radical, anti-Israel, antisemitic base happy. However, thanks to Israel’s success in Rafah, we don’t need to speculate about Egypt’s reasons. It wanted to hide those tunnels, which were (a) embarrassing and (b) profitable.

JNS summarizes the tunnel news, along with information about Israel’s control over the Philadelphi Corridor between Rafah and Egypt:

Israeli troops have taken “operational control” of the Philadelphi Corridor, the 8.7-mile-long border area between Gaza and Egypt, IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said on Wednesday evening.

Israeli forces have so far uncovered 20 tunnels underneath it, he added.

[snip]

“Hamas exploited the Philadelphi Corridor, using it to build this infrastructure just dozens of meters from the border with Egypt so that we would not strike them,” said Hagari.

“This infrastructure was located between 10 and 40 meters from the border, specifically so that Israel would not strike near the fence with Egypt. I remind you that in recent weeks, Hamas has fired about 70 rockets and mortars from the Rafah area.”

Hagari described the Philadelphi Corridor as Hamas’s “lifeline,” through which the terror group smuggled weapons and supplies into the Gaza Strip.

As I said, these discoveries are embarrassing to Egypt because it’s always made a big deal about its secure border between Gaza and itself, so secure that no Gaza refugees were allowed to cross into Egypt.

The discoveries also explain how Turkey was able to treat all those wounded Hamas terrorists. They were almost certainly being smuggled through Egypt as were, I’d guess, top Hamas officials and lots of weapons.

It turns out that the tunnels were also a source of profit for those controlling them. Because the above-ground border was closed, the below-ground tunnels were the food conduit for the people in Rafah. And with Egypt and Hamas out of the picture, their control over food prices has also ended:

This news follows on the heels of the revelation that Israel did not bomb the hell out of refugees in Rafah. Instead, it made a targeted strike at Rafah fighters hiding among civilians. The strike managed to hit a Hamas weapons warehouse that was also hidden among civilians:

It certainly wasn’t Israel’s fault that her enemy decided to situate its own civilians on top of a powder keg.  

All of this provides further perspective about the fact that Joe Biden is desperate to protect Hamas from losing the war. He is doing everything he can to shelter a genocidal organization that has no problem using its citizens as shields and charging them extortionate food prices to line its own pockets.

Image: X screen grab.

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