The photograph of the Middle East, foggy and dark, can currently be observed through the opaque glass of the negotiations on Hamas’s Jewish hostages. Which become less with every moment: it is the worst Middle East, torn on 7 October by Hamas from its history as a world of mutual recognition between Arabs and Israel with the Abrahamic Pacts, thrown back into the Middle Ages. Who decides, in these hours, whether the war will have followed Rafah is the most perverse terrorist organization in the world, which dismembers the old, rapes women, burns children and then carries out negotiations on hostages which it kills and tortures, appearing at press conferences in five-star hotels while its antagonist democratic, the Israeli government, is tortured by public opinion while fighting it.
The whole world watches the show, waits for Sinwar to decide on the future, stop the war, handing over a number of hostages, the most needy, now slimmed down beyond measure (we’re talking about 20 or 30 out of 133), while keeping the delicious morsel of the young soldiers and girls for the next stage. In exchange, Israel agrees to hand over thousands of terrorist prisoners; it also accepts the return to the north of the people of Gaza who had moved to the south and the dismantling of the military blockade that ensures that terrorists do not reoccupy the entire Strip hidden among the crowds. Hamas wants an indefinite ceasefire, Israel agrees to grant it for several weeks and who knows later. And it’s clear: if you agree, you won’t enter Rafah.
Egypt is the most interested among the mediators, it places its conditions on Hamas and Israel (control of the border with Gaza, the Tzir Philadelphi); For months the United States has been discussing and preparing with Israel the passage of displaced people from Rafah to other areas and their entry with targeted actions that avoid bloodshed. Biden is banking his pacifist electoral card on this point, but he knows from a recent survey that 80 percent of American public opinion is with Israel and 72 are in favor of entering Rafah to put an end to the power of Hamas.
Netanyahu keeps his cards close to his chest: yesterday, in front of the families of soldiers killed in the war, he promised to enter Rafah and “annihilate the Hamas battalions”. It is a due commitment, which affirms the indispensable, that is, that Israel will not surrender and that Hamas will be defeated, and says nothing about how the prime minister will behave if Sinwar accepts the “extraordinarily generous” agreement, as Antony Blinken said .
It is important that Biden reiterates the strength of the alliance with the USA: after Israel’s great success in responding to Iran, we are working together with various countries including the Abrahamic Pact on a prospect that Bibi certainly appreciates. Meanwhile, if by chance Sinwar were to accept, Rafah could be suspended without giving up, even in the eyes of Saudi Arabia. What if Sinwar says no? There would be a Rafah aimed especially at specific objectives, Israeli soldiers are already deployed on the border. Time would be taken while the eviction and humanitarian aid measures for the population agreed with the USA are put into motion. The war however, and Biden knows it, certainly cannot end with the return of power to Hamas in Rafah, it would spread everywhere, it would be the end of Israel’s sovereignty over its territory, the incapacitation of vast border areas, and above all a terrible defeat of democracy, of common sense, of democratic morality throughout the world.
Biden knows that it is not convenient for anyone not to go to Rafiah at all, even if the hostages come first, and he will say, like Manzoni, «adelante Bibi, con juicio».
