The War in Gaza

According to a report in the Washington Free Beacon the Israelis expect to be in full control of the Gazan city of Rafah by the end of this month.

The Beacon's Owen Tilman writes:

The Israel Defense Forces on Monday said that two of Hamas’s four battalions in Rafah have been destroyed and that Israel is expected to have full control of the city by the end of June, according to a report in the Jerusalem Post.

Israel said Division 162, part of the IDF’s Southern Command, has operational control of roughly 60 to 70 percent of Rafah. The assault on the Hamas stronghold has left at least 550 terrorists dead and destroyed 200 tunnel shafts and Hamas’s last major rocket supply, and battles with the remaining two battalions are already underway, the IDF said.

Israel launched its invasion of Rafah on May 6, taking control of 30 to 40 percent of the city by May 20. Rafah is home to an estimated 1.2 to 1.4 million Palestinians who have sought refuge following the outbreak of the war on Oct. 7, when Hamas terrorists launched an attack on southern Israel that left 1,200 dead and took roughly 250 hostages.

President Biden's somewhat desultory foreign policy initiatives continue to be of little effect either in Jerusalem or in Hamas' tunnels in Rafah:

The development in Rafah comes just six days after Hamas rejected a U.N.-backed ceasefire proposal outlined by President Joe Biden, which would have secured the release of the remaining hostages in exchange for prisoners held in Israel.

The Israelis are determined to exterminate Hamas or compel them to surrender, and they should be encouraged to do so. To pressure the Israelis to allow Hamas to survive, as the Biden administration does, is to guarantee that October 7 will be repeated as often as Hamas is able to do it.

Hamas has repeatedly acknowledged that its whole raison d'etre is the destruction of the Jewish state and the death of all its people. It has vowed that attacks on Israel like the October 7th attack will continue until Israel is no more.

There can be no peace between Israel and Hamas as long as such hate-filled fanatics exist, and those in this country who support them are morally complicit in the atrocity of October 7th and in Hamas' desire to carry out such attacks in the future. Those who don the keffiyeh to show "solidarity" with Hamas are no different than those who would wear swastikas to show solidarity with the perpetrators of the holocaust.