All eyes on Rafah: Where are the red lines?
On Sunday, May 26, Israeli airstrikes bombarded a tent refugee camp in Rafah, where thousands of displaced citizens were taking shelter. The videos emerging from Rafah show how far the world and humanity has rotted in the past eight months. Words like "rules-based world order" and "democracy" seem utterly meaningless when one sees a gruelling video of a man carrying the burnt body of a headless child—an actual decapitated child—on social media, captured by Palestinian photojournalist Abdullah Alattar, on the site. Another video posted by photojournalist Yousef Hamada showed burnt human bodies, literal charcoal, being dragged across the sand. In Jerusalem, on the other hand, people celebrated the Lag B'Omer festival, dancing in bonfires. He wrote on X, "The only light in Rafah this year." Yet still, according to the US, it is apparently Israelis that can hold dancing bonfires, and not Palestinians who cannot find water to drink, who are facing "an existential threat."
The area that Israel bombed, in Tal Al-Sultan, the western part of Rafah, was rendered as a "safe zone" by the IDF, and citizens were coerced into evacuating there from their homes in various parts of Gaza city. Israel has repeatedly deployed this cycle of deceit to misguide innocent Gazans to mass extermination. Betrayal and disinformation of such kind, has always been an integral part of genocidal conspiracies, such as in the Rwanda genocide. After pushing out Palestinians from North to South of Gaza to Rafah, Israel has stepped up its planned invasion of Rafah despite mounting international pressure.
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At this point, it is incredibly hollow to talk about ceasefires and the two-state solution. It's time to move to an actual understanding of the Israeli apartheid regime and the failures of international law to hold Israel accountable. The international community must reckon that the two-state solution and ceasefires are not the path to "peace," because if they were, we would not be looking at live videos of Palestinian bodies being burned to death, just 48 hours after an International Court of Justice (ICJ) Order ruled that Israel must halt its offensive in Rafah. ICJ jurisdictions are non-binding and they have no effective way of implementing the order save by way of a resolution at the United Nations Security Council, where the United States has veto power, and has used its veto power to shield Israel no less than 89 times to date. Reckoning with the alarming state of affairs, requires reckoning with the incompetence of the mechanisms that are in place.
It's also time to stop narrowing the genocide down to two evil characters, Netanyahu and Biden—as though this would not happen without them. Israel has exploited and terrorised Palestinians for eight decades. In current times, there are thousands of people who aren't politicians, who do support Israel's killing of Palestinians and actually believe Palestinians are sub-human. There are thousands of bystanders as well—wilful bystanders. The best example are the shameless Arab states that have done nothing and watched the relentless slaughter of Palestinians. Saudi Arabia has stepped up arrests against those who wrote anti-Israel posts; Jordan restricted Palestinian flags in protests, and Egypt has set up a system of charging thousands of dollars at border crossings, to profit from the most desperately persecuted people.
What we have been seeing for the past eight months is a systematic genocide in plain sight allowed and abetted by the whole world. Israeli society, US society, Arab society, and the international community as a whole allowed the state of Israel to commit massacres after massacres, and it still goes on. We keep asking: what will it take to stop them? Realising that it is impossible to negotiate with a genocidal regime.
In response to concerns expressed by world leaders, Israel's prime minister said it was "a tragic mistake" despite their "utmost efforts not to harm innocent civilians." Israel has a few lines they keep regurgitating to justify the genocide. "We killed them but they were terrorists," they say. When that PR doesn't work and it's revealed that they kill children in tents, Israel says, "we killed them by accident." Does a state drop 60 bombs—in 48 hours as reported by Al Jazeera—in a densely populated area of displaced citizens by accident? It takes heavy conditioning to believe such excuses for a textbook case, no less, of systematic, state-sponsored persecution.
The US, which has been harping that it will not support Israel's invasion of Rafah, conveniently did not mention the gruesome murder of Palestinian civilians, and issued the statement, "Israel has a right to go after Hamas, and we understand this strike killed two senior Hamas terrorists who are responsible for the attacks against Israeli civilians. But as we've been clear, Israel must take every precaution possible to protect civilians." As usual, they keep beating around the bush, weaponising terrorism to legitimise the terrorism that they sponsor.
What happened in Rafah on Sunday should not be forgotten, till the next massacre happens—which has become a trend now. The world has fundamentally changed since October 7, and the biggest mistake would be to let this be another alarming act by Israel.
It should serve as a turning point to recognise that the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza is strategic, and that stopping it requires dismantling of the whole apartheid regime. There are no red lines for Israel, because they haven't been drawn. Nation-states are more interested in their political and economic gains than humanitarian values of protecting Palestinians.
As we have continued to watch this biggest failure of mankind, the US has been approaching Arab states, as reported by the Financial Times, for a "day after Gaza." In many ways, the US deals with the Middle East not as a foreign policy issue, but as a domestic issue. They have long presumed an entitlement to decide the fate of Iraqi and Syrian civilians, and now more starkly the Palestinians. UAE, Saudi Arabia, have reportedly rejected the advances, but Bahrain reportedly signalled their willingness to join a coalition till a Palestinian government is formed in Gaza, "after Hamas." The whole world is complicit in backing this genocidal campaign to rob Palestinians from self-determination, from their rights to choose their own government.
Israel's mission to "eliminate Hamas" itself is a strategy of genocide. Hamas—they are no less terrorist than the IDF—is born out of resistance to military occupation.How do you beat an ideology of resistance? Israel is not just killing left and right, they are doing so with a plan in mind. Killing children and civilians, pushing them out of Gaza, and full-scale destruction is a strategy to ensure another Hamas does not spring up. It is killing generations of Palestinians so that no traumatised child today, no orphaned child today, by Israel, can ever push back against Israel. The cycle will keep repeating itself if Palestinians continue to exist.
A recent investigation by the Washington Post has revealed a strategic corridor that the Israeli forces have been fortifying in Gaza. The corridor is a four-mile road from within Gaza which meets the Mediterranean Sea at the new, seven-acre floating pier: the US project that Biden announced to bring aid into Gaza. The findings provide evidence of Israel's plan to "indefinitely" maintain security control over Gaza, and complete military occupation. Put that together with the US' plans for Gaza, and you realise that the US, too, wants a destroyed Gaza, to solidify its national interests and use Gaza as a buffer zone to normalise relationships between Arab States and Israel.
The US keeps saying Israel—with one of the strongest economies and armies in the world—faces an existential threat. It's true, Israel's apartheid regime faces an existential threat with the existence of Palestine and the truth that's coming out. Negotiations don't need to happen. What does, is a concerted effort to take down the apartheid regime, as happened in South Africa. If Israel continues like this in Rafah and destroys Gaza, with the impunity that it has had, and forms a Gaza where Palestinians have no right to determine their own governance, we're looking at nothing but a funeral of humanity in the international order.
Ramisa Rob is in-charge of Geopolitical Insights at The Daily Star.
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