Eamon Dyas

In order to complete the final stage of its full-scale invasion of Gaza the IDF says that it will be necessary to forcibly move “1.4 million people – or at least a significant amount of the 1.4 million people” that have now crowded into Rafah. 

The population of Rafah was around 280,000 before the full-scale Israeli invasion and it has since grown to the current number because the massive air and artillery bombardment involved in the ground assaults on Gaza City and Khan Yunis since last October has driven out the population of those places leaving Rafah as their only place of refuge.

This has meant that the population of Rafah has grown five times in the space of four months. To get some idea of the pressure this has put on the life-sustaining infrastructure of Rafah we can imagine what that kind of sudden growth would mean for the population of London. The current population of London is around nine million. Increase that by a factor of five (as has been the case in Rafah) and we get a London population of 45 million. To put that in context, if the combined populations of nine of the next most populous cities in England were moved into London it would lead to an increase of just over 12.3 million whereas if London was subjected to the same relative increase in the population as has been the case with Rafah that population would have increased by 36 million (45 million minus the current nine million population). In other words, even if the populations of the nine most populous cities in England were moved into London that would still result in a relative shortfall of 23.7 million that would need to arrive in the city before there would be an equitable situation with Rafah’s predicament. And even then, on top of that, if the combined populations of Scotland, Wales and Ireland (which constitutes a total population of 13.5 million) were to descend on London you would still need to find another 10.2 million to be crammed into London for the people of London to experience the same relative pressure as is currently being placed on Rafah.

Obviously, a sudden increase on that scale would have long since overwhelmed the life-sustaining infrastructure of any city including London. Now imagine a situation where a hostile army has in the meantime devastated the rest of England and has cut off all sources of food and medical supplies. Also add to the equation a situation where the water supply and sewage treatment plants have been made inoperable by the actions of this invading hostile army and where all the hospitals in Greater London have been rendered totally or partially inoperative. Only then can we begin to imagine the conditions that the 1.4 million people now crammed into Rafah are currently living under.

But the prospects for these unfortunates has now become worse as the Israeli army has declared its intention to forcibly move them out of this last remaining refuge. But to where? Thankfully we were given the answer by the Israeli Defence Forces spokesman Daniel Hagar at a press briefing on Wednesday, 13 March. According to this gentleman the 1.4 million will be moved “to humanitarian islands that we (Israel) will create with the international community”. 

Will these “humanitarian islands” which Israel intends to create in conjunction with the international community be in Gaza? As yet it’s not clear. If so, we can be certain that these “humanitarian islands” will be designed to serve a similar purpose to that of the native American reservations of North America. That is to ensure that they cannot nurture any long-term coherent or effective expression of Palestinian nationhood. 

But it’s more likely that these “humanitarian islands” will not be restricted to Gaza and will include the “resettlement” of a good proportion of the 1.4 million Palestinians abroad. As part of its plan Israel is obviously banking on the eventual cooperation of other states that could be put to the service of its ethnic cleansing of Gaza under the guise of a humanitarian mission. 

Could that be part of the well-publicised plan that the U.S. is now organising for the construction of a sea port harbour in Gaza? We can’t be certain but the context of all this might lead us to that conclusion.

In the meantime, let’s turn to the claim by the Israeli armed forces that it intends to move the 1.4 million people from Rafah for their own protection. This may indeed be true but not because Israel is motivated by a genuine concern for the welfare of the Palestinian people. It has long been the case that Israel wants rid of the Palestinians. In fact, the basis on which the state of Israel was established in 1948 was predicated on the absence of a Palestinian population “from the river to the sea”. Towards that end it would be willing to undertake whatever actions it deems necessary even if that involves the killing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Rafah. But Israel cannot leave out of the equation the likely response of the surrounding Muslim states to killing on that scale to say nothing of the response of the western populations and the unpredictable way that response might affect the policies of those western states that Israel continues to rely upon both economically and through the supply of arms. 

That being the case the next best thing from the Zionist perspective is to evict the Palestinians from what Israel views as its biblically ordained land, or at least enough of them to make what is left incapable of giving effective expression to the idea of a Palestinian state at any time in the future. But how, in the 21st century, does a colonising state undertake the mass expulsion of the original population from a land which it is now intending to usurp? It can, as it did in 1948 during the Nakba, drive them out by military force. While Israel has used military force in Gaza since October 2023 to move Palestinians from their homes it has only moved the population around Gaza and not out of Gaza. Doing so overtly would run a risk similar to the one associated with the killing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. 

So, a different way must be found to evict the Palestinians from Gaza and that requires Gaza being made into a place where a significant number of the Palestinians would no longer wish to live. This is the only credible explanation of what the IDF has been doing in Gaza for the past five months. The destruction of the life-sustaining infrastructure, the libraries, universities and schools, museums, cultural and recreational centres as well as the hospitals and centres of civic administration, and the destruction of at least half of the buildings in Gaza (see: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-68006607).

And now, after the destruction inflicted on Gaza City and Khan Yunis, the IDF has set its sights on Rafah. Netanyahu and the IDF claim that it is necessary to subject the city to the same treatment that it previously meted out to the other cities in Gaza in order to finally eliminate Hamas from its last stronghold. 

“To win this war, we must destroy the remaining Hamas battalions in Rafah. If not, Hamas will regroup, rearm and reconquer Gaza – and then we’re back to square one. And that’s an intolerable threat we cannot accept.” – Netanyahu in a video address on 12 March.

This time however, in deference to western concerns for the previous levels of civilian casualties the IDF has invited the “international community” to be part of saving the population by cooperating in the establishment of “humanitarian islands”. But it is the Israeli Government that is putting the population now living in Rafah in harm’s way. Just as it was in Gaza City and Khan Yunis, it was the decision of the Israeli Government that led to the resultant destruction and loss of civilian life. That decision was to create a humanitarian crisis under the guise of which the Israeli objective of ridding Gaza of a significant part of its Palestinian population could be implemented. 

Israel justified its decisions that led to the death of so many civilians by claiming that it was a necessary part of its military objective of eliminating Hamas. But at this stage just how effective is Hamas as a fighting force? Given that it is an unconventional military force it is difficult to answer that question. However, the Israeli government and the IDF has already claimed to have answered that question. According to the BBC the IDF estimated that Hamas had around 30,000 fighters in Gaza before the full-scale Israeli invasion (see: 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-68387864.amp).

That of course may have been an underestimate but since the full-scale Israeli invasion the Israeli government has claimed to have inflicted significant losses on Hamas. Last month Netanyahu himself was saying that the IDF had already destroyed 18 of the 24 Hamas battalions in Gaza with the remaining four of the surviving six being concentrated in Rafah. If that is the case and with the IDF controlling the surrounding area it is difficult to see how subjecting Rafah to the same destructive treatment suffered by Gaza City and Khan Yunis is warranted if the consideration is a purely military one. More than likely, Israel has decided that Rafah must be made as uninhabitable as the rest of Gaza. These actions are considered necessary as part of Israel’s objective of destroying Hamas. To Israel Hamas is synonymous with the Palestinian will to statehood and if Hamas is to be destroyed so too must be the capacity of the Palestinian people to entertain any idea of statehood. And, in turn, for that to happen the numbers of Palestinians in Gaza needs to be reduced below their capacity to sustain any kind of state. Because, for reasons given earlier, the killing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians is deemed politically unacceptable, the destruction of their habitat is for the Israeli government the next best thing. The effort of making Gaza uninhabitable for a good proportion of the Palestinian population is part of what the Israeli government believes to be a worthwhile objective if it leads to the elimination of the threat posed to its Zionist project by the idea of a Palestinian state. 

As the human response of western populations to the ongoing suffering of the Palestinians increases, those western powers who have stood by while the butchering and destruction was taking place have taken the opportunity for redeeming themselves by becoming involved – at least on a superficial level – with what is supposed to be a humanitarian mission. So far, the effort invested in that mission has been minimal and it was always only likely to increase when Israel saw fit to involve them. By inviting the international community to become part of the creation of “humanitarian islands” for the displaced Palestinians Israel has now provided its western allies with the means by which those allies can be utilised in the final stage of the current Zionist game plan. Those allies can now engage with the Israeli objective by dressing it up in humanitarian terms. But if this stage of the Zionist project is to succeed the actions of Israel and the failure of its western allies to hold Israel to account will be something that neither Israel nor its western backers will escape from. The current stage of the Zionist project being brought to completion in Gaza may result in dampening the will of the Palestinian people but it will come at an enormous cost in terms of the erosion of the idea of Israeli exceptionalism and the exposure of western values as being nothing more than an expedient based on hypocrisy. Israel will become even more of a pariah state in the eyes of the rest of the world and ‘the West’ will become tainted by association, accelerating the decline of its global moral influence.