CNN
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Thick clouds of earth and sand fill the air as our convoy of Humvees arrives in Rafah, the first time international journalists have been allowed in since the Israeli military launched its ground assault on the town two months ago.
As the dust settles, the scale of the damage is startling. But it is also all too familiar.
This part of Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, which became the last refuge for more than a million Palestinians at the start of the war, is now unrecognizable.
Israel has repeatedly described its ground operation in Rafah as “limited.” But in this southern Rafah neighborhood, the destruction appears nearly identical to what I observed in northern Gaza, central Gaza, and Khan Younis, through the limited prism of Israeli military movement in Gaza.
Some houses were destroyed and other buildings were bombed.
“This is where the main destruction is, because there were IEDs and because the tunnels were booby-trapped,” Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, the IDF’s chief spokesman, told me when I asked him how this was a “limited” operation.
“And when you see destruction, it’s either because the houses were booby-trapped, or because we demolished a tunnel and the houses collapsed, or because Hamas fired from those houses and endangered our forces and we had no other way but to make sure that our forces were safe,” Hagari added.
Jeremy Diamond/CNN
CNN saw extensive destruction in Rafah, ranging from destroyed homes to bombed buildings.
Other parts of Rafah are not as devastated, he says. But CNN cannot independently verify his claims: Israel has banned foreign journalists from entering Gaza independently, and our only access is through embedded members of the Israeli military. And it is to this devastated part of Rafah that they took us.
The Israeli military brought us here not to see the destruction, but to talk about the reasons behind its offensive here, what it says it found and what it accomplished.
Before reaching Rafah, we drive along the border between Gaza and Egypt: we take what is known as the Philadelphia Corridor. The area has been occupied by the Israeli army, which claims to have discovered dozens of tunnels as well as rocket launchers used to fire rockets into Israel. Hagari showed us one tunnel that he says extends about 28 meters underground.
The Israeli military claims that Hamas has used the Philadelphia Corridor to smuggle weapons from Egypt and then to the rest of the Gaza Strip. Hagari says some tunnels extend into Egypt, but he cannot yet say for sure whether these tunnels were functional and were used to smuggle weapons into Gaza. Egypt has denied the existence of tunnels connecting Gaza to its territory.
“We are studying these tunnels carefully and checking which ones were functional and which ones are no longer functional because they may have been blocked on the Egyptian side,” Hagari said.
He would not say exactly how long Israeli forces would have to occupy the corridor, but said it could take weeks or months.
Jeremy Diamond/CNN
Israeli soldiers accompanied CNN on a trip to Rafah in southern Gaza.
Hagari also said that Israeli forces had killed more than 900 Hamas fighters in Rafah and were close to defeating Hamas’ Rafah Brigade. But it is less clear how many militants have disappeared and are likely to regroup once Israeli forces leave the area. In the absence of a long-term strategy or alternative to Hamas’s rule in Gaza, Hamas has already begun doing just that in other areas where Israeli forces had previously withdrawn.
As for the Rafah ground operation, Hagari cannot say whether it will be the last in Gaza.
“I won’t say that, because what you will see is that when we get intelligence that there may be hostages in one of the points in Gaza, we will move in and launch an attack. If we get intelligence in one of these areas that Hamas terrorists are planning a terrorist attack against the Israelis or our forces, we will launch an attack and an attack,” Hagari said. “That’s what you will see.”
