Why did Israel resume killing Palestinians a day before the Rafah crossing opened?

While the United States speaks of continuing to implement the second phase of the ceasefire agreement in Gaza, Israel continues to empty the plan of its content by preventing any semblance of life from returning to the Strip. Just one day before the opening of the Rafah land crossing, Israel killed more than 30 Palestinians in shelling that targeted objectives including a police station in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood and displacement camps in Mawasi Khan Yunis in the southern Strip, under the pretext of targeting fighters from the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and Islamic Jihad. As is the case every time, the United States seems to understand this attack, which former US State Department official Thomas Warrick says may have targeted pre-determined military objectives. Americans, as Warrick said on the program "Course of Events" - believe that the agreement allows Israel to strike any target it deems a threat to it or its forces in the Strip, and it seems they have accepted the evidence it presented for the recent attack.

However, Mahmoud Yazbek, an expert in Israeli affairs, responded to this by saying that the sole purpose of this major escalation against civilians is certainly to reignite any area that Israelis believe has entered a phase of calm. The second and more important goal of this attack, in Yazbek's opinion, is to confirm that Palestinians will not be allowed to live in this place, especially since the statements of Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir over the past 3 weeks have all revolved around the necessity of not allowing normal life to return to Gaza. Zamir even openly spoke about the necessity of preventing the entry of food aid into the Strip, which means a return to the policy of public starvation while the American president talks about the second phase of the agreement, as Yazbek says.

The return of life to the Strip - and Yazbek's words - means the army's failure to achieve the goals of the war it fought for two full years, and therefore Israel will increase these operations and kill more Palestinians with the entry of the technocrat committee concerned with managing the Strip. The Palestinian writer and analyst Iyad Al-Qarra does not disagree with Yazbek's statement, because killing this number of civilians hours before the opening of the Rafah crossing and the entry of the technocrat committee "means that this committee will not be allowed to work."

Consequently, Israel's endeavor to thwart the mission of the technocrat committee even before it begins seems very clear, and this is something Al-Qarra says was the title of the Israeli public statements campaign calling for preventing any attempt for Palestinians to recover from the repercussions of the war. If Israel strikes the police station, traffic department, and courts in this manner, the technocrat committee will not find any institution through which to provide service, as Al-Qarra says, adding that Israel "continues to confirm that things will not proceed as it wishes."

Therefore, Palestinian fears - as Al-Qarra adds - revolve around the fact that the entire agreement is heading towards collapse through this approach that empties the second phase of its content, by keeping Israeli forces in the Strip, controlling the Rafah crossing, and preventing the entry of anything that could change the humanitarian, health, and educational reality.

In contrast, Warrick believes that the United States will pressure Israel to continue implementing the agreement, whose success he believes depends on the formation of an international stabilization force, whose rules of engagement are being worked out, according to him.

However, Dr. Mahjoub Al-Zuwairi, an expert in Middle East policies, disagrees with the former US State Department official's proposal and believes that Israel deliberately sabotages every step of this agreement. Through this bloody escalation, Israel wants to bring the plan of forced displacement of the population back to the forefront, in addition to its insistence on maintaining the state of chaos that Al-Zuwairi says it insists on to destroy the lives of the residents.

With its occupation of more than half of the Strip and its freedom to bomb the rest of it whenever it wants with American understanding, Israel becomes able to prevent the technocrat committee, formed by the American president, from carrying out its assigned work.

Accordingly, what is happening, in Al-Zuwairi's opinion, is a systematic undermining of the agreement by maintaining unbearable conditions, which led the Europeans to withdraw from the monitoring committee that was on the borders of Gaza, because they were unable to know the truth of what was happening on the ground despite the presence of 5 intelligence agencies there.