Outrage at a strike in Rafah is unlikely to change policy

Only one detail of the events of the night of May 26th is undisputed: dozens of people were killed in an Israeli air strike in Rafah. Palestinians say that several large bombs were used to target a camp of civilians, uprooted from other parts of war-torn Gaza. The Israel Defence Forces (idf) acknowledge there was a strike but claim they used two smaller missiles to target two senior Hamas men who were killed. The additional deaths, they insist, were caused by secondary explosions—a vehicle carrying explosives or a fuel truck—that they had not foreseen.

There is disagreement as well over the status of the attacked area. According to the Palestinians, it was a designated “humanitarian zone”. The idf insists that the humanitarian zone is elsewhere, but accepts that the area that was hit is not included in a list of locations in Rafah that it had ordered civilians to evacuate.

Reports of at least 45 dead, many of whom seem to have been killed when tents started burning, have provoked an international outcry. The strike took place two days after the International Court of Justice (icj) issued an order to halt any strikes in Rafah that “may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”. Israeli officials insisted that this meant they could continue operating in Rafah, as they were taking the necessary precautions to avoid harming Palestinian civilians. But even accepting that interpretation—and the idf’s claims that the strike was “accurate” and that it planned to avoid additional casualties—the gruesome outcome makes clear the human cost of Israel’s war in Gaza.

Israel fears that these deaths, coming immediately after the icj order, could lead to more intense international pressure to accept a ceasefire. Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, made a rare acknowledgment of the Palestinian loss of life, calling it “a tragic accident”, but insisted that Israel would “continue to fight”.

A number of similar incidents during this war have resulted in mass casualties. First came the explosion outside the Ahli Arab hospital, originally blamed on Israel but then thought almost certainly to have been caused by an errant Palestinian rocket. Two weeks later hundreds were killed and wounded in an air strike on the Jabalia refugee camp. In February over a hundred people were killed in a stampede around a food convoy in Gaza City.

These are just some of the most deadly incidents in a war that has claimed the lives of tens of thousands in Gaza. After each one, expectations grow that it will prove to be a turning-point, forcing Israel’s allies, especially America, to say “enough”.

It has not happened so far. That is partly because in the Americans’ eyes the attacks of October 7th continue to justify Israel’s pursuit of Hamas with the utmost ferocity; partly because a large number of Israeli hostages are still being held in Gaza; and to a large degree because this Israeli government seems generally impervious to international criticism and pressure.

Could the latest strike on Rafah prove different? Coupled with the icj ruling it is possible, though America has already said that the strike does not cross any red lines that would prompt a change in its policy. The apparently accidental killing of an Egyptian soldier in an exchange of fire between the idf and the Egyptian army could also have an effect. For Israel, hundreds of Palestinian casualties are one thing, but when its allies are among the dead, that is another. When seven foreign employees of the World Central Kitchen, an aid group, were killed on April 1st in an idf drone strike, Israel was forced to allow more aid in.

Ultimately, the obstacle to a ceasefire is the political situation and public opinion within Israel. The national trauma of October 7th has been exploited by hardline politicians in Israel to promote an unrelenting war in Gaza. Yet, at this point, even some within the Israeli security establishment accept that a pause in the fighting is required to secure the release of the hostages—and to shore up Israel’s eroding international standing. ■

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