Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains resolute despite international pressure to ease the situation with Hamas. Governments and human rights organizations are urging Israel to refrain from deploying its troops into Rafah, the only city in Gaza not yet occupied. Nevertheless, Netanyahu is determined to persist until Hamas loses its grip on the region entirely.
On February 25, Netanyahu assured reporters that Israel will take Rafah, regardless of the outcome of the most recent cease-fire talks. With the influx of refugees from the rest of Gaza, the city’s population has surged to almost 1.4 million. Netanyahu stated that Israel is still committed to destroying Hamas’s capacity to carry out the crimes of October 7 of last year, despite the fact that the majority of the organization’s remaining armed terrorists are also located in the city.
It seems that President Biden is just as determined to prevent Israel from capturing Rafah. He is advocating for a ceasefire to be called for in a resolution passed by the UN Security Council. Israel is attempting to work out a temporary truce with Hamas on its own terms, but only if the terrorist organization frees the Israeli prisoners that it kidnapped on October 7.
Although a settlement is possible, according to Netanyahu, Hamas’s demands are unrealistic and belong on “another planet.” Additionally, he cautioned that even a compromise would merely postpone an Israeli march into Rafah rather than stopping it.
Yoav Gallant, the Israeli minister of defense, reaffirmed that Hamas will not be let to survive. According to him, the terror group’s residual troops are insignificant, and the IDF will ultimately decide whether or not to bring them down. He continued by stating that Rafah is the next Hamas center of gravity and that the Israeli Defense Forces had already destroyed eighteen of Hamas’s twenty-four regional battalions.
The start of Ramadan on March 11 is the deadline that Security Minister Benny Gantz has set for the release of the remaining hostages. He issued a warning that the battle would spread to Rafah if Israel’s missing people were not returned home by then.
