How Israel Turned the Tide in Rafah

If you believe the media drumbeat—that Israel’s war effort is futile, its strategy absent, and its political isolation growing—it’s impossible to account for the breakthrough. Why, after months of contemptuous stalling, did Hamas begin to bend?

“Two reasons,” says Israel Katz, Israel’s foreign minister, in an interview at the Journal’s office. “One, they understand now that there will be no cease-fire without a hostage deal. Two, the IDF is acting aggressively against the terrorists in Gaza. Especially important was entering Rafah,” Hamas’s stronghold at the southern end of the strip.

Israel cut off Hamas’s supply routes and now holds Hamas “by the throat,” as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently put it. Senior terrorists are dropping at a faster clip as Israeli intelligence closes in; half of Hamas’s military leadership has been eliminated. Even after a large Israeli bombardment to kill Hamas’s military chief, Mohammed Deif, who is considered unlikely to have survived, Hamas barely attacked in response and rushed to clarify that it isn’t leaving negotiations. “Hamas is under much more pressure now,” Mr. Katz says. “That’s what made the difference.”

Israeli intelligence confirms it. “We see now the signs that there is a lot of pressure from the military arm of Hamas. They push the leaders in the hotels outside”—Hamas’s politicians, who live in luxury in Qatar—“to achieve an agreement. It wasn’t like that before,” Mr. Katz says. Hamas’s leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, “didn’t want a deal before. Not even when we offered everything.”

It shouldn’t be a surprise that pressure on Hamas could yield gains in negotiations. Yet for months Western powers took the opposite approach, pressuring Israel to end the war and leave Hamas victorious. They called for an “immediate cease-fire,” increasingly delinked from a hostage deal. Humanitarian groups upbraided Israel and kept quiet about Hamas. The International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court menaced Israel with bogus prosecutions and tribunals.

“The main reason that this murderer, Sinwar, didn’t do the hostage deal is because he expected the world to stop Israel without it,” says Mr. Katz. “He expected the ICJ, the ICC, the Security Council, maybe a conflict between the United Nations, Israel and the EU”—surely one of them would force Israel to capitulate. Time was on Hamas’s side, no matter how many hostages it kept or killed.

Mr. Katz was on the receiving end of many lectures from Western officials. “I sat with foreign ministers, and they told me, ‘Don’t go to Rafah, don’t go to Rafah. It’ll be a mess.’ And I told them, ‘What are you saying? You believe that we can leave Hamas in Rafah, and so five minutes after we withdraw, they will take all of Gaza?’ ”

The Rafah operation was delayed by months, during which Hamas seemed to be under less pressure than ever. The White House withheld weapons from Israel. Warnings of a humanitarian disaster poured in from all quarters. On May 6, Israel invaded Rafah anyway.

“And we were right,” says Mr. Katz. “Everyone knows it now, even the U.S., because everyone warned that it would be a catastrophe. It’s a war, yes. It’s not a picnic. But they said that it would take four months to evacuate the population. It took only days.” More than a million Gazans quickly evacuated Rafah to designated safe zones.

No critics recanted, but the pressure on Israel quietly diminished. As if embarrassed, the world suddenly took note that Hamas is the obstacle to a hostage deal. The White House made the point, especially after airing on May 31 an Israeli offer that Hamas went on to reject. The U.N. Security Council ratified that offer. Even the Palestinian Authority, which glorified the Oct. 7 massacre, now blames Hamas for the continuation of the fighting. Hamas, the odd man out, had to admit there is no cease-fire on the horizon unless it releases the hostages.

Mr. Katz knows a deal still isn’t guaranteed. “It’s Hamas, after all,” he says. “There will be a deal only if Sinwar will understand that he doesn’t have any other choice.” That means no rest for the wicked. “The people that deal with the negotiations are telling us now: ‘Don’t stop, continue’ ”—push Hamas even harder.

Coming face to face with the reality of Palestinian nationalism has changed Israel. “The people from the kibbutzim in the south—many were socialist and believing in all the ideas,” Mr. Katz says. “Now, they’re telling us, ‘We are against a Palestinian state.’ ” They saw on Oct. 7 what purposes such a state would be put to.

Western foreign ministers should know better. “You will sit there, in the fjords in Norway, and decide that there will be a Palestinian state?” Mr. Katz says. “It will not happen. We want peace more than you do.” It’s suicide that Israelis object to. “No one can force Israel into it, not even the wise deputy prime minister in Spain,” he says, referring to Yolanda Diaz, who uses the protest slogan for the destruction of Israel: “From the river to sea, Palestine will be free.” Mr. Katz says: “I told them the days of the Inquisition have passed.”

Has Oct. 7 changed how the world sees the conflict? “Not enough,” Mr. Katz answers. “They forget. But one thing they can’t forget is the hostages,” he says. “We don’t allow them to forget.” He often brings families of hostages on foreign trips and to meetings with his counterparts.

Western statesmen face domestic pressure if they back Israel against the butchers. Some Europeans fear their large Muslim populations, Mr. Katz says. Others worry about social media. “So, it will be hard,” he tells them, “but you are leaders.”

Mr. Katz is grateful for American support and has no interest in criticizing the Biden administration. On Iran, he thinks the U.S. is moving in the right direction. Regarding the delayed weapons he says: “I think that now everything is OK, and it’s very good that our enemies know that it’s OK.”

On the ICC, he aims his fire at the prosecutor. Karim Ahmad Khan had assured Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Britain’s then-Foreign Minister David Cameron that before making a decision, he would give Israel a chance to provide evidence. “Why are a lot countries mad at him? Because he lied to them,” Mr. Katz says. Mr. Khan canceled the meetings with Israel on short notice and instead showed up on CNN to announce that he would seek arrest warrants for Israeli leaders.

Mr. Katz is fresh off conversations with Western statesmen at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization conference in Washington. “I went to tell them three words,” he says: “Iran, Iran, Iran.” If you want a preview of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress on Wednesday, start there.

The world may treat Hamas as the Jews’ problem, but the men calling the shots in Tehran aren’t so easily dismissed. “Iran sells 80% of its oil to China,” Mr. Katz says. “Now they’re selling every day about 2 million barrels. It was only 300,000 before,” when the U.S. enforced its oil sanctions. China gets the oil at a substantial discount.

“You understand very well what is the competition now in the world between the U.S. and China,” Mr. Katz says. He made this case to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and found her receptive. “Even this administration has an interest, because of the global conflict, to be aggressive against Iran,” he says. It also has an opportunity. “Now, because Iran supports Russia and the Europeans are afraid of Russia—not only against, but afraid—the Europeans are willing to join.”

These days, Europe sometimes brings America along. At the International Atomic Energy Agency in May, the U.S. didn’t want to make a stir by censuring Tehran’s nuclear program. It did so in the end, however, because France, Germany and the U.K., with some help from Israel, pushed the censure anyway.

Mr. Katz sees the Islamic Republic as vulnerable. “Iran is like an egg: hard on the outside but soft on the inside. From the inside, most of the people in Iran are against the regime,” he says. “The economy is weak, still weak. And after we saw the helicopter crash,” in which Iran’s president and foreign minister died, “maybe the Iranian army is not so modern. So, to put effective sanctions against Iran can be a game changer. Because there are no proxy terrorist organizations without Iran.”

That’s worth remembering as Israel faces down Hezbollah, Tehran’s army in Lebanon. It started firing on Israel on Oct. 8 and has slowly escalated ever since, turning the north of Israel into a no-go zone for nine months.

Mr. Katz warns that “all-out war” is very close. “We don’t want it, and maybe they don’t want it. But it can’t remain like this,” he says. “I’m telling you, press Iran. If you want to prevent war, the way to prevent war is to pressure Iran and explain to Iran what the cost will be.”

Contrary to what the West assumes, “a cease-fire in Gaza and a hostage deal will not prevent a war with Hezbollah in the northern front,” he says. “Israel won’t agree to ‘quiet for quiet’ anymore.” Quiet won’t be enough for 70,000 evacuated Israelis to return to their homes in the north of Israel. They need real security, which requires Hezbollah to leave its perch in southern Lebanon, demilitarizing the buffer zone as the U.N. mandated in 2006.

Can Hezbollah be persuaded to pull back its forces? “I doubt it,” Mr. Katz says. “My personal view is it’ll happen either through an Israeli military response or if Iran orders Hezbollah to withdraw.”

In the end, Mr. Katz says, Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah “doesn’t understand Israel. He has an image of weakness”—but he’s wrong. “We don’t want war, because we don’t want anything in Lebanon. But if it will be war, it will not be like in Gaza,” where the presence of hostages restrains Israel’s use of force. “About 80% of our air force isn’t being used right now,” he says. If Iran doesn’t pull Hezbollah from the brink, it will be.

Mr. Katz speaks for many Israelis when he says: “We don’t ask anyone to fight instead of our soldiers. It’s a principle for us.” But Israel can’t stand alone: “We need you to back us, and to let our enemies know that you back us.”

“This is not a regular war. Iran and Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis and the Shiite militias—they want to eliminate Israel. To destroy Israel. It’s not a game. We don’t have another homeland, OK?” As our meeting ends, he sighs and comes at it from a different angle: “It’s not like the Holocaust. I’m a son of Holocaust survivors, may they rest in peace. I heard the stories from my mother, and I know everything. It’s not the Holocaust—but it’s the same intent. If they would have the power to do the same thing, they would do it.”