Today, Explained - Rafah, the last “safe” zone

Episode Date: February 15, 2024

Palestinians are trapped in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, where about 1.5 million people have sought refuge. After bombings this weekend, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is threatening a ground invasion. Palestinian journalist Aseel Mousa takes us inside Rafah, and the Economist’s Anton La Guardia explains why diplomatic efforts to halt the fighting have stalled. This episode was produced by Avishay Artsy, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Laura Bullard and Kim Eggleston, engineered by David Herman, and hosted by Noel King. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Rafa is the southernmost city in Gaza. It had a population of about 200,000 people. But after Israel declared war on Hamas after the attacks of 10-7, more than a million Palestinians fled south to Rafa. They have nothing. They exist between the sky and the land, a reporter told us. Despite criticism, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu plans a ground invasion of Rafah. I think the people who are telling you, oh, you can't do it, you can't go into Rafah under any conditions,

are basically saying, don't win, lose. Facing all of this, some people taking refuge there have just stopped wondering what comes next. If the people thought of what will happen after the ceasefire or after the end of this war. They will die. They will die. They will die. Coming up on Today Explained, can four months of frantic diplomacy lead to a ceasefire before Rafa's destruction? Bet MGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long. From tip-off to the final buzzer, you're always taken care of with a sportsbook born in Vegas. That's a feeling you can only get with BetMGM.

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Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. This is Today Explained. I am Asil Moussa, a Palestinian freelance journalist from the Gaza Strip. I work for The Guardian, The Intercept, Middle East Eye, Al Jazeera, and Electronic Intifada.

I have been working as a journalist for two and a half years. Now I am in the city of Rafah in the southern part of the Gaza Strip. This is my second displacement. Actually, on 13th of October, the Israeli authorities ordered the residents of the Gaza Strip to evacuate the northern Gaza Strip and to relocate to the south. So consequently, my family and I sought refuge in al-Maghazi refugee camp, where we stayed at my grandfather's house, along with approximately 40 other displaced individuals. The situation there was dire. We faced severe shortages of food, running water, and even the drinkable water. And even Israel claimed that area as a safe area. I lost 10 people of my family. Israel targeted the house of my cousins.

And as a result, 10 of my relatives were killed. Seven of them were children, and one of them was a woman, and the other was a young man. That's what brought Asil and her surviving family to Rafah, down by Gaza's border with Egypt. Rafah was a safe zone, but the Israeli offensive that began up north has now come to Gaza's southernmost point. So to the north is all destruction, and to the south is Egypt, where most Palestinians can't go. Asil and more than a million other people are trapped. Now I can hear the Israeli bombardment. I can see the civilians. I can see the people who are living in tents and in indescribable situations.

On Monday, the residents of Rafah, along with the displaced people, endured a night of terror beyond description. It was a deadly night. The Israeli occupation unleashed a barrage of missiles and artillery shells on the city, resulting in the tragic loss of approximately 100 civilian lives. So that night, the house of refuge I am in was shaking. The windows of that house shattered. Actually, I consider myself super lucky to be in a house. The majority of people are now in the streets and the tents. They are enduring a severe cold. They don't have even

clothes. Actually, I borrowed the clothes from my cousins. When people left their homes and were displaced, they only took their IDs, their passports, their very essential needs. People cannot hold all the things that they may need to another home or to another tent or to another refuge area or shelter. The Israeli bombardment is hard in itself, being under fire, under bombardment. But being under bombardment without even the essential needs such as food, water, medical supplies, medicines, is making the problem or the tough time harder than enduring it with only bombing. As a journalist, you are also interviewing people in Rafah.

What are you hearing that you think we should know? Okay, today I was in an interview with two sisters who are married to two brothers. They were in Khan Yunis. They were in a building with their husbands and children. And they are civilians. They are civilians. The Israeli occupation targeted their home, leaving their husbands killed

and ordering them or instructing them or forcing them to leave their home. After bombing it, they let the women who are these two ladies, Sahar and Ibtisam, they forced Sahar and Ibtisam and their children to evacuate this home. The two ladies told me, Asil, we left our husbands in the streets. The body of their husbands, they are killed. And we ran with our children. And we walked for a long time to reach a safer area. I cannot even imagine how they endured this. They left the bodies of their husbands on the streets. Sahar told me, Asil, I didn't have

the chance to even hug him or to kiss his head or even to protect his body or to bury him. Actually, this was the hardest thing I hear today. In a different interview, I met family who are displaced for three times. They are staying in a tent, in a very small tent. They actually have nothing to eat. They have even the simplest essentials. They don't have them in the tent. They told me that, Asil, that Monday night was terrifying. The situation was indescribable.

We were very afraid. We decided to leave Rafah and to relocate once again. But we don no place else to go. And so why would Israel conduct a bombardment of this place that essentially feels like a last stand for civilians? Now, when Israel is asked about that, Israeli leaders say, Rafah is the last Hamas stronghold. This is now where Hamas is hiding, is located. Does that strike you as a correct assessment? You're laughing. Yeah, I'm laughing. They are killing the children, women. They are targeting hospitals. They are targeting schools. They are killing journalists. The correspondent of Al Jazeera, Wa'ith Al Dahdur, they killed his wife, his daughters, his sons. And I'm just laughing. They are like saying they are looking for Hamas.

The hospitals are not Hamas. The killing of approximately 30,000 people, the majority of them are women and children. Where's Hamas? Where's Hamas between the civilians. And they ordered the residents to relocate to Rafah. Now we are over 1.3 million Palestinians in Rafah. But let me tell you something. Israel is killing people without getting any accountable. They see that the whole world fails Palestinians in Gaza. They left Palestinians in Gaza to be killed, to be wounded, to be targeted, to be bombed. They are not looking for Hamas. They are trying to kill the whole Gazans. This is what I can see and in the northern parts of the Gaza Strip

there is a real starvation my friend just asked me if you can help me to get any wheat flour we don't have food I asked him to go to my bombed house and look for any kind of food if he can't find it under the rubble people are now looking for find it under the rubble. People are now looking for food

from under the rubble. They are eating the food of the animals. And we are talking about Hamas. Now, Israel is not targeting Hamas. It's targeting the Palestinian people. So what Israel is conducting is an aerial bombardment, but Israeli troops have not entered into Rafah. Are people in Rafah expecting a ground invasion? Yes, we are expecting a ground invasion. Yes, we are. And if the prospect of a ground invasion into Rafah happened, it would be a catastrophe, as 1.3 million people are already displaced in Rafah. So the people now have no place to go to. And is there any way to prepare for this?

What can we do? What can we do? What can we do? We stay. We stay in the houses, in the tents, the streets, in the shelters, waiting to be killed. We don't have a plan F. We made the plan A, plan P, plan C, and we have no more plans. Asil Musa. She's a twice-displaced Palestinian journalist in Rafah, where backup plans have been rendered useless and people only focus on survival. We don't have the luxury to think of the aftermath. We only think how to survive day by day. We think of how to flee from being killed. Now, there is a method by which the world deals with such catastrophes, and that method

is diplomacy. Like Asil, we wondered where diplomatic efforts stand, and we have answers coming up. Support for Today Explained comes from Aura. Aura believes that sharing pictures is a great way to keep up with family, and Aura says it's never been easier thanks to their digital picture frames. They were named the number one digital photo frame by Wirecutter. Aura frames make it easy to share unlimited photos and videos directly from your phone to the frame. When you give an Aura frame as a gift, you can personalize it, you can preload it with a thoughtful message, maybe your favorite photos. Our colleague Andrew tried an aura frame

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to get $35 off Aura's best-selling Carvermat frames with promo code EXPLAINED at checkout. That's A-U-R-A-Frames.com, promo code EXPLAINED. This deal is exclusive to listeners and available just in time for the holidays. Terms and conditions do apply. Support for this show comes from the ACLU. The ACLU knows exactly what threats a second Donald Trump term presents, and they are ready with a battle-tested playbook. The ACLU took legal action against the first Trump administration 434 times, and they will do it again to protect immigrants' rights, defend reproductive freedom, fight discrimination, and fight for all of our fundamental rights and freedoms.

This Giving Tuesday, you can support the ACLU. With your help, they can stop the extreme Project 2025 agenda. Join the ACLU at aclu.org today. This is Today Explained. My name is Anton LaGuardia. I'm the diplomatic editor of The Economist, which means I write about foreign policy and national security. All right, so this war has been underway for about four months and one week. What has diplomacy looked like so far in this conflict? How would you characterize it?

Well, it's been intense. There's a lot of flying. There's a lot of time spent in planes and convoys and marbled palaces. Anthony Blinken has been to the region five times so far since October 7th. I'm back first and foremost to consult directly with our partners on the joint efforts to bring all of the remaining hostages home. This particular negotiation, I think, has been difficult because it's working at three levels. One is to mitigate the humanitarian impact of the conflict on Palestinians. The second part of it is to try and get an immediate ceasefire and hostage deal.

And the third and hardest element is try and connect all this to a bigger regional peace deal that tries to, you know, at its most ambitious, end more than a century of conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. President Biden has said, The United States will do everything possible to make it happen. What does that include? What's on offer? Well, what's on offer is something akin to what happened in November. You remember there was a one-week pause in which, you know, several dozen hostages and prisoners were released. After nearly seven weeks of intense fighting, finally a day of peace,

as the temporary truce took hold, a moment so many have been anxiously waiting for. The idea is to do it again and do it on a much bigger scale. So they're talking about a six-week pause in the fighting, renewable, and then there's obviously bargaining going on about two main things. One is exactly who gets released in what sequence in exchange for what. And the other thing is, does this lead to a permanent cessation in the fighting or not? And what kind of progress is being made? At the moment, seemingly little. There was hope a week or two ago that things were

fluid and moving. Both sides seemed interested in a deal. But we've just heard that after the latest round of talks between intelligence chiefs, including Bill Burns, the director of the CIA in Cairo, the Israelis have said the delegation is not going back to Cairo. And this has obviously caused much consternation and anger among the families of the hostages who feel that not enough is being done to get their loved ones home. What accounts for the logjam in negotiations? Is there one particular perspective holding things up? I think it's a number of things. The hardest point is that Hamas wants a full cessation of violence and a full Israeli withdrawal. Israel wants a temporary cessation in the fighting and the ability to keep fighting until total victory, as the Israeli

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu puts it. So Hamas is not going to release its hostages if it thinks the Israelis are going to come back at them. And Israel says, we have to finish this fight so that Hamas is destroyed. So that's, I think, the biggest problem. We're seeing reports that President Biden is growing very frustrated. There was some reporting this morning that President Biden told some campaign donors that Prime Minister Netanyahu, quote, has been a pain in my ass lately, or, quote, he's been killing me lately. What's your sense of where Joe Biden is right now,

both the pressure he's under and the ways in which his mind may have changed or be changing as this thing continues, this conflict? Well, I don't sit in the White House, but the one thing that Joe Biden has never done is put restrictions on the weapons that he's prepared to send Israel. At the same time, he has wanted greater restraint in the way Israel conducts its operations, has done a lot to try and get more humanitarian aid in to try and convince Israelis to think about the civilian

population. This comes in part from America's own experience of counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan, where America learned the hard way that sheer military power is not enough. You need a political dimension. And he's tried hard to get the Israelis to think about the day after. The trouble is that the day after that he sees and that Netanyahu sees are very different. Joe Biden wants a path that ultimately leads to a Palestinian state living side by side with Israel. With Israeli security guaranteed and Palestinian aspirations for their own state fulfilled, I say this as a lifelong supporter of Israel. That's the only path that guarantees Israel's security for the long term.

Bibi Netanyahu will hear nothing of it because he says a Palestinian state will merely create another terrorist state on our borders, this time with the West Bank. In any future arrangement, Israel needs security control over all territory west of the Jordan. I tell this truth to our American friends. The prime minister needs to be capable of saying no to our friends, saying no when necessary and saying yes when possible. So they disagree fundamentally about where they want to go, although they're still more or less in lockstep on the current aims of the war. But even here, you're seeing some parching of the war. But even here, you're seeing some parting of the way. So, for example, the Americans say the aim is to ensure Hamas can never do October the 7th again, which is not quite

the same as what Bibi Netanyahu says, which is total victory in the destruction of Hamas. And I think that implies a realization on the American side that something will remain of Hamas, even as a political idea or as a religious movement. You're not going to be able to eradicate that. And Netanyahu seems to want a much more maximalist aim. And then there are the kind of repercussions for America's position in the Middle East. So you're seeing an escalating and worsening second front with the so-called axis of resistance. These are the Iranian groups sponsored by Iran in Lebanon, in Iraq, in Syria, and Yemen, and where America has now taken, you know, three fatalities under attack, has retaliated. And there is a worry that the more this goes on,

the worse it will get and the harder it will be to bottle up again. So for all those reasons, you're seeing tension between the two leaders. And one of the things that really seems to have irked Netanyahu is a move to impose sanctions on a small number of settlers deemed violent in the West Bank. Four settlers facing financial sanctions and visa bans from the U.S. Which is really a sort of warning shot. It's going after not Netanyahu himself, but after his right-wing coalition, and to some extent after Netanyahu's base among settlers.

And this is a move that's been followed by Europeans. France took similar measures. Britain has done the same. And I think there's a worry that this is going to that's been followed by Europeans. France took similar measures. Britain has done the same. And I think there's a worry that this is going to start to exert real pressure on the settler movement or certainly the more extreme fringe of it. Benjamin Netanyahu is also under pressure from many sides. And at the moment, he's speaking, he's warning of a ground invasion in Rafah. We talked to a journalist there earlier, and she says people there are expecting that. Is that changing diplomatic efforts at all?

I think it's adding urgency to the effort to try and wind down the war, if not stop it, and then try to get into a diplomatic process that leads to a wider settlement. But, you know, Netanyahu has a consideration. The Israeli public has moved to the right. For all the demonstrations that you're seeing on the streets of Israel, it is not a demand for peace now of the kind that was seen after the Lebanon War in 1982. The belief that peace with Palestinians is possible has been greatly eroded since the Oslo Accords of 93, for a number of reasons, not least of which is the Second Intifada of the 2000s, and now October the 7th. So, though there's urgency to get there,

I think it's just much harder to do it. And there's also mistrust on the Palestinian side of the Israelis, the weakness and discrediting of Abu Mazen. This is Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader in the West Bank, who's now in the 18th and 19th year of what is supposed to be a four-year term. And there's, of course, the tragedy of what's happening in Gaza itself. Is anyone at this point speaking with any level of specificity about what comes after this war? Is anyone talking about how Gaza is rebuilt and who rebuilds it? Yes, but it is in the middle distance rather than within reach. Nobody wants to rebuild stuff that's going to get bombed again. So the Arabs are saying we will do humanitarian help, but we will not do reconstruction until there is a full cessation of this conflict

and there is a real path towards a deal that includes a Palestinian state. So the promise is there, but it's not going to be acted upon until we get much greater clarity. Let me ask you a last very big picture diplomatic question, if I can. Before 10-7, Israel was normalizing relations with neighboring Arab countries. Is there any hope of that resuming at any point in the near future? You would have thought not, just because emotions are so fired up at the moment and the profound lack of trust. But going around with the Americans in the Middle East, there is this kind of surprising sense that Saudi Arabia in particular, the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, really wants to settle this matter and that he's willing to do big things

if he gets Israelis to move on Palestinian statehood. And those big things would include recognition of Israel, peaceful diplomatic relations, but seemingly also some kind of Arab guarantee to Israel to try and offer reassurance that it will be safe in the future. What is included in those security guarantees is unclear, but it seems to be formalizing some of the things that happen, intelligence sharing, military exercises, joint air defenses, and so on. But, you know, that's kind of, you know, the 10th step. They need to get onto the first step, which is stopping the fighting. No Arab leader can move until the fighting stops and the human misery ends. And then you need to get into

a ceasefire, and then you need to get to an Israeli commitment for Palestinian statehood. That was Anton LaGuardia, diplomatic editor of leading magazine The Economist. Our thanks as well to Maram Hamid of Al Jazeera English. Today's episode was produced by Avishai Artsy and edited by Amin El-Sadi. It was fact-checked by Kim Eggleston and Laura Bullard. And David Herman is our engineer. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained. you