By capturing a border crossing, Israel is blocking all emergency aid for Gaza. Has the ground invasion of Rafah begun?

By capturing the Rafah border crossing into Egypt, Israel made a tactical move on Tuesday that raises many questions.

1. The humanitarian issue

What should happen next with aid to Gaza? The Israeli tanks at the border crossing are blocking that aid, warns the UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA. And this after the army closed a border crossing to Israel, Kerem Shalom, earlier in the week following a rocket attack by Hamas.

Israel has “choked” the two main arteries for humanitarian aid, said a spokesperson for OCHA, the UN humanitarian agency. If fuel cannot enter the enclave for some time, “that would be a very effective way to bury the humanitarian operation.”

If the supply routes for aid and fuel supplies are indeed interrupted, UNRWA says, it will worsen the “catastrophic hunger facing people, especially in northern Gaza.” According to a Palestinian official, there was no movement at the border crossing on Tuesday morning.

2. The military-strategic issue

Is the takeover of the border post the start of the ground invasion of Rafah that has been announced for weeks? It appears so, especially in combination with the Arabic-language leaflet with which Israel has told residents of some neighborhoods in Eastern Rafah that they must leave their homes.

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On the other hand, an Israeli official spoke to various media of a “very limited” operation, intended to put pressure on Hamas to agree to Israeli conditions for a ceasefire and the release of hostages. The real operation would not have started yet.

This semantic dispute is reminiscent of the beginning of the Gaza war, shortly after the Hamas terror attack on October 7, when there was daily speculation about when the ground invasion would begin. Afterwards it turned out that Israel had in fact already started during all that speculation; not with one loud bang, but bit by bit, with smaller movements of troops and tanks.

3. The diplomatic issue

Can Israel really ignore the repeated, urgent call from the president of its key ally, the US, not to invade Rafah? Can it resist the warning from the UN chief that such a ground invasion would be “intolerable”? And can it withstand the criticism from neighboring Egypt that the capture of the border crossing represents a “dangerous escalation”?

The preliminary answer is: yes. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday in a fiery speech at the opening ceremony of Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, that Israel will “continue to fight human evil” even if it finds itself alone.

This poses a dilemma for US President Joe Biden. Two months ago he said in so many words that a ground invasion of Rafah was “a red line” for him because of the humanitarian consequences. In short: this is how our support extends, and no further.

But when you designate something as a red line, there must also be sanctions for violating the line. And that is where the problem arises: what is the sanction? Will Biden withdraw military aid to Israel, just now that he has finally convinced Congress of a new billion-dollar package for Israel? That seems unlikely. But what then?

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Under American pressure, Israel has already made a concession: it will not enter Rafah in one go, but will comb the city neighborhood by neighborhood, with the aim of eliminating Hamas and freeing hostages. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of displaced people in Rafah do not know where to go, now that Israel is also bombarding the city from the air. In the words of the NGO Norwegian Refugee Council: “Not only is there nowhere safe to go, for many people there is no way to get there.”

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