Israel has completely wiped out Rafah, turning a fifth of Gaza’s territory into a giant buffer zone. This is part of Israel’s plan to permanently remain in Gaza and facilitate the ethnic cleansing of its people.
Over the past month, the Israeli army has been methodically emptying Rafah of its residents and leveling what remains of its buildings. The city of Rafah and its surrounding towns are now virtually gone, with most residents having evacuated north to Khan Younis and the Mawasi coastline under artillery fire and the approaching sound of tanks and bulldozers.
Rafah has also been the site of several documented massacres, including the first responders massacre in the Tal al-Sultan neighborhood in late March, when the Israeli army opened fire on and executed 15 paramedics and rescue workers from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society and the Gaza Civil Defense.
Rafah is the Gaza Strip’s southernmost governorate, located along the border with Egypt. Before the war, it housed about 200,000 residents, and its territory made up about a fifth of Gaza’s land. It no longer exists.
The Israeli demolition and displacement operations started in Rafah well before the short-lived ceasefire between Israel and Hamas took effect in mid-January. During the ceasefire period, Israeli forces prevented residents of several border areas from returning, such as Yibna refugee camp, al-Awda, al-Shabura, and Bir Canada. After the ceasefire broke down in mid-March, the Israeli army flattened them all.
The objective of the all-out assault on Rafah is now clear: to turn all of Rafah into a flattened buffer zone with a permanent Israeli military presence.
The objective of the all-out assault on Rafah is now clear: to turn all of Rafah into a flattened buffer zone with a permanent Israeli military presence. According to a Haaretz report, this would “effectively turn Gaza into an enclave within Israeli-controlled territory, cutting it off from the Egyptian border.”
Images and reports coming out of Rafah show a city completely wiped out, with residents confirming that it is no longer fit for human habitation.
A buffer zone and a corridor
Khaled al-Dahaliz, 36, carried his belongings on a cart and fled Rafah towards al-Mawasi, west of Rafah, several weeks into the Israeli army’s renewed bombing campaign. He tried to hold out for a time, moving between different locations within Rafah, but could no longer withstand the indiscriminate shelling and bombing, he said in recorded testimony obtained for Mondoweiss.
“We left Rafah for the last time. We don’t think we will be able to return; nothing remains of it,” he said. “Even the tents we set up to survive in Rafah were targeted by the Israeli army.”
“Wherever you go, you won’t find homes or people — only the destruction of camps,” al-Dahaliz explained. “It’s so that no one knows where their home used to be.”
In areas adjacent to the Philadelphi Corridor, the strip of land running along the Gaza-Egypt border from which Israel was supposed to withdraw by the end of the first phase of the ceasefire, everything has been bulldozed and cleared, Rafah residents confirm. Areas such as Yibna refugee camp, the Saudi neighborhood, and Tal al-Sultan are now a military no-man’s-land barred to civilians: Israel’s new buffer zone.
In addition, over the past several weeks, the Israeli military finished establishing what it calls the Morag Corridor, which now separates Rafah City from the adjacent city of Khan Younis just north of it. Netanyahu had announced in early April that the Israeli army would begin its construction, which was completed on April 12.
This means that additional neighborhoods were destroyed to secure the Morag Corridor, just as homes were wiped out during the construction of the Philadelphi and Netzarim corridors before the war.
“Rafah City is now surrounded by corridors constructed by the Israeli army on all sides,” Ahmad al-Dabash, 36, told Mondoweiss. He noted that the continuous sound of explosions could be heard from as far as Deir al-Balah and Nuseirat in central Gaza when the Morag Corridor was being constructed.
“The goal of the bombings is to shake the ground beneath the houses, so that if there is a tunnel, it collapses on the heads of those inside,” al-Dabash said, detailing what he and other residents saw as they fled Rafah. “After the houses are blown up, it looks like they were turned inside-out, and the bombs left these wide craters that swallowed the houses.”
“The al-Kharba roundabout and the Awni and Masbah areas north of Rafah were all in good condition. Now, the residents of Deir al-Balah hear the sound of explosions there, and the residents of Khan Younis see the smoke constantly rising from them as a result of the daily bombing,” al-Dabash said.
“The Israeli occupation wants to make life impossible in the Gaza Strip, and that is exactly what it has done. These are clear goals: the occupation will not let us live in peace and will continue to try to expel us from our land.”Ahmad al-Dabash
The Morag Corridor runs through Gaza from east to west, parallel to the Netzarim and Philadelphi corridors. It is named after a now-defunct Israeli settlement that had existed between Rafah and Khan Younis before Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005.
“They returned to the areas they were in before 2005. Their military positions and settlements were in the same areas. They know those areas well and occupied them again,” al-Dabash explained.
The massive route is hundreds of meters wide and runs through land that has since been bulldozed, costing thousands of families their homes and ensuring they will never return. According to residents, the route starts from the Baraksat area of Rafah, where the first responders’ massacre took place, and runs through the Shakoush area near al-Mawasi, west of Rafah, and toward the Kerem Shalom crossing in the far east of the city.
Residents believe that Israel’s actions on the ground demonstrate a clear intent to maintain a prolonged occupation of Gaza. The establishment of military routes and installations, its failure to withdraw from the Philadelphi Corridor during the ceasefire, and its blowing up of the deal all indicate that Israel had been planning on this endgame from the start, residents told Mondoweiss.
“The Israeli occupation wants to make life impossible in the Gaza Strip, and that is exactly what it has done,” al-Dabash said. “These are clear goals: the occupation will not let us live in peace and will continue to try to expel us from our land.”
Tareq S. Hajjaj
Tareq S. Hajjaj is a journalist and a member of the Palestinian Writers Union. Follow him on Twitter at @Tareqshajjaj.
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