Drawing red lines in Gaza war

Joe Biden’s “red line” warning to Israel is understandable. No one wants to see more civilian casualties in Gaza. But the US President needs to be realistic about what Rafah – Hamas’s last stronghold in southern Gaza, which is crowded with 1.5 million people including 600,000 children – means to hopes of achieving an end to the war. That would do most to help alleviate the suffering of desperate Gazans caught in the crossfire.

As The Wall Street Journal has noted, the incontrovertible military reality is that Israel “cannot defeat Hamas without taking Rafah … (it) cannot avoid a Rafah campaign if it wants to achieve its war aim of destroying Hamas”. Yet it was Rafah, with its maze of tunnels where top Hamas leaders including Yahya Sinwar were controlling their terrorist forces, that Mr Biden was referring to when he warned last Sunday AEDT that Israel would cross a red line if it proceeded with a ground attack on the key city.

Mr Biden said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “has a right to defend Israel, a right to continue to pursue Hamas, but he must, he must, he must pay more attention to the innocent lives being lost” as a result of actions being taken. The US could not accept “another 30,000 Palestinians dead”, he warned. Legitimate anxiety about a potential new wave of civilian casualties does not change the reality, however, that for as long as Hamas holds Rafah and embeds itself among the 1.5 million civilians who are human shields, the war will not end.

There are lessons in how the US, faced with a similar dilemma in 2017, ended Islamic State’s stranglehold on the Iraqi city of Mosul at the cost of unintended civilian casualties. Allowing Hamas to maintain its hold on Rafah would be tantamount to conceding defeat in the war. Mr Biden’s vocal criticism of Israel in general, and Mr Netanyahu in particular, probably cannot be separated from his desire, in an election year, to appease the Democratic Party’s anti-Israel wing. He wants to avoid a protest spectacle at the Democratic National Convention in August and he’s worried about the backlash against him among young people and Arab-Americans revealed in the recent Michigan primary.

What Mr Biden can and should do is focus on ensuring supplies of emergency aid for suffering Gazans reach their target. At this stage of the war the best outcome would be for Israel to achieve a decisive victory over the terrorists as quickly as possible. Only then can Gaza be opened up for the infusion of aid it needs.

As Mr Netanyahu said, responding to Mr Biden: “(We) have a red line (of our own) … that October 7 doesn’t happen again, never happens again.”