I doubt many of us knew where Rafah was a year ago. That is one of the strange silver linings of war. Earlier this year we took a boat ride in Laos on the Mekong River. I knew the name all too well from those newsreels of the Vietnam war from the mid-60s. Someday someone will say, “I’m going sightseeing in the Donbas Region” like they were going to the Lakes District of England. I’m not sure Rafah or any part of Gaza will ever be a tourist destination in fifty years, but you never know.
Yesterday, Rafah seemed to have turned a page in the Gaza/Israeli conflict. I know Bibi wants us to call it the Hamas conflict, but there is no getting away from the daily war-torn visage of what’s left of Gaza. To be fair, Gaza was never the garden spot Beirut, with its nearby famous lofty cedars and universities, could claim. It was always the dry desert entrance to the Sinai and is now the only non-Israeli controlled door out of Gaza into Egypt. And that door mostly only swings out except for the occasional and all too infrequent humanitarian food and water convoys heading in.
Rafah is the place where the IDF, during a routine patrol, engaged and killed three local militants with the help of a few sneaky drones. Then it was discovered, almost by accident, that one of the three was Yahya Sinwar, the military head of Hamas and the political head of Gaza itself. Why was this such a surprise? Because this was not a Palestinian leader that got killed. This was not even a Palestinian soldier that was killed. This was a scared and lonely combatant, sitting in an armchair in a bombed out building, who had come out of hiding in a tunnel system that would put most ant farms to shame, presumably to breathe some fresh air, only to get run down like a cockroach skittering across a kitchen floor. The only ideology in Yahya Sinwar‘s head at that moment was likely how to catch his breath and escape to hide away another day.
This was the man who masterminded the October 7th attack that killed 1,195 Israelis and took another 251 hostage. It was his plan that has brought the two-state solution diabolically back to the fore at the expense of the lives of least 42,438 Gazans (mostly civilians) and 99,246 more that have been wounded. It is said that that he was a man who strongly promoted the use of hostages for his terrorist band’s purposes. The Israelis are jubilant to have cut off the head of the Hamas snake, and the world wants to speculate that Palestinians are equally happy that this man, who unilaterally chose to spend away their lives, and who supposedly shielded himself with civilians and hostages for 12 months, is finally gone. But are they and did he?
I’m sure that the IDF and Mossad know the real story, whatever it is (they do, after all, seem to know every speck of sand in the desert in that little patch of earth), but the corporate Israeli line is that Sinwar was never without an entourage of civilians and hostages when he moved about. And yet, he was caught this time more or less alone, not unlike Osama Bin Laden in his chalet in Pakistan. It is a great victory for Israel that they got the guy, but did it help or hurt the storyline about his cowardly ways? Israel will say he was a lone cockroach in the end and that other militants should see their future as Hamas leaders as being just as bleak (needless to say, this act should be a deterrent). The progressive pro-peace pro-Palestinian crowd will likely say that he was just a soldier doing his duty to defend himself and that the tales of his shielding himself were pro-war figments of the IDF’s PR campaign. I, for one, say either the IDF has no PR Department or, if it does, that they should get fired. While there are many who feel IDF tactics are fully justified and appropriate response to Hamas’ radicalism, few would argue that the IDF was trying hard to spare Palestinian lives for the past year, or if they were, they too should get fired for their abject failure in doing so.
Therein now lies the perfectly crafted conundrum of Rafah. Was it all worth it? Was Sinwar well advised to pay the Palestinian price that he paid? Was Israel right to react to the atrocities of October 7th with the added atrocities of the past year in Gaza? Was Sinwar the King of Spades in the evildoer deck or was he just a guy running for his life in his final moments? Presumably Sinwar and Netanyahu both had a mother who raised and nurtured them in their infancy. Both wanted the best for their son. Neither likely wanted to do as the Ballad of the Green Beret suggests, to “put silver wings on my son’s chest”. But life turned out differently for both Sinwar and Bibi. And whether it was worth it is already too backward looking to be of value to anyone but a future historian.
When Bin Laden was found and killed it was a full decade after Al Qaida had done its dastardly deed and had largely been disbanded. Hamas is still flailing and biting Israel and Iran especially, as the care and feeder of Hamas, is far from finished with its anti-Israeli rampage. It is unclear that the Hamas snake is equally dead and gone now. And the world is left to speculate whether the death of Sinwar will actually change things. Optimists say it’s the figurative final shot of the war. Others feel it’s exactly the wrong time to expect the guns to get dropped. Indeed, it might embolden some like those who wanted the U.S. to follow up 1945’s victory in Berlin with a follow on march to Moscow. Seize the day, the hawks all say.
But what of Rafah? Will Rafah ever recover? The Godfather tale gives us the likely answer. Remember when the Sicilian rural mafia warlord tells his men that they must kill little Vito Corleone? And remember when they don’t and Robert DeNiro later answers the wisdom of that command? Today there are likely a few Gazan boys and girls who have mental pictures of Sinwar’s final moments. Evil, thy name is vengeance. Under that scenario, this never ends as long as even one child remembers. We wish it wasn’t so and that the tit for tat didn’t exist. Jews are admonished to never forget and I bet the boys and girls of Rafah chant themselves to sleep with the same refrain. Vespers are the evening prayer that we say to thank the creator for our good fortune. We kneel and bow our heads and remember all those we care about and wish them well in the days ahead. But a nocturne is a soulful song of the night in its most final and nihilistic way. A nocturne is a dark refrain that is more a wail than a prayer. Nocturnes are not filled with hope for a brighter day, they are filled with sadness and finality. Rafah may one day be a garden spot, but not before it sings its nocturne and obliterates not some, but all of its memories.