Crumbling cement blocks stand like tombstones of shattered houses in what was once a Palestinian city. The ruins bear witness to the lives that passed there: polka-dot pajamas, fairy tales read in the evenings, motorbikes drawn in notebooks, beans with sauce eaten from cans. As far as the horizon, as far as the Mediterranean, Rafah is lost: only piles of inert remains and fragments of memories trapped in the rubble.
Beneath them lies a strange grave: 7 kilometers long, one meter wide. There, for almost eleven years, Hamas kept the body of Hadar Goldin, the Israeli lieutenant killed during the 2014 war. The special forces soldiers, their faces covered, say that for 18 months they had only one task: to find his body. They knew the area, but not that it was in one of the most extensive networks of Hamas tunnels, dug under one of the most densely populated areas of the Strip: weapons depots, command centers, 80 rooms at a depth of 25 meters, with ventilation brought from the surface.
On the surface, only the dogs have remained true to their nature. They wander among the tanks, sniff the bars, mark their territory, but even they seem lost: the dust has dried their noses, the former courtyards no longer exist, food is scarce. They are now the sole masters of a twisted world without the smells they knew.
The tunnels are narrow and suffocating. Fifteen meters under the sand, behind a metal door, a labyrinth of branches opens. An officer — who asked to remain anonymous while the army reviewed the article for non-disclosure of prohibited information — says that “after a few kilometers, the tunnels connect with those of Khan Younis,” the city where Yahya Sinwar, the architect of the October 7 massacre, was born. The walls are lined with reinforced concrete, held up in places by wooden beams; rusty Hamas walkie-talkies still hang from nails. From here, Mohammed Shabana, who was killed in May, a year after the Israeli offensive intensified towards the Egyptian border, led the Rafah Brigade.
In the center of Rafah was the Shabura neighborhood, where a limited group of international journalists managed to enter only under Israeli military escort — the only way into Gaza today, while independent access remains prohibited. Not far from there stands the blue-and-white skeleton of an UNRWA school. This entire region is now a yellow zone under Israeli military control: more than half of the Strip. Residents have been banned from returning; only a few hundred civilians survive among the rubble. The rest — over 2 million people, while the number of Palestinians killed has exceeded 70,000 — has been pushed towards the other half of the Strip, equally devastated. There, Hamas groups are restoring a reign of fear: taxes on scarce goods, reprisals against disobedient clans, street executions of suspected “collaborators.”
Donald Trump claims that the Israeli occupation should be temporary. But the head of the General Staff, Eyal Zamir, declared two days ago that “the Yellow Line is the new border” and that the army “has complete freedom of maneuver.” Meanwhile, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to travel to Washington to discuss the next steps with Trump, while expressing disbelief that an international force can disarm Hamas. “It will be up to us,” he says. For the time being, he is not backing down: a retreat to the old line would mean not only a resurgence of the conflict, but also his political downfall, the loss of support from the most radical allies who keep him in power.
On a wall, among the ruins, someone has spray-painted: “Tzipora, I love you.” A red heart that stands out amidst the gray of destruction, of a city where bombs and bulldozers have rewritten the landscape itself: new dunes for tanks, craters to reveal tunnels, improvised hills to gain superiority over the terrain.
Hadar Goldin's parents never gave up on their search for their son — 4,118 days in a row. His father, Simha, a professor of medieval history at Tel Aviv University, was finally able to mention his son's name in funeral prayers a month ago, when Hamas handed over the body as part of a ceasefire agreement. He continues to blame those who, he says, failed to act when they should have: "We asked governments to pressure Hamas to return Hadar. They didn't act out of fear. The massacre of October 7 could have been avoided."
Meanwhile, all the generals and service chiefs who were on duty that day have left — all except Netanyahu. After 14 years in power, he continues to evade any responsibility and maneuvers to prevent a state commission that would investigate his decision to allow millions of dollars in cash to enter Gaza, brought in suitcases by the Qatari emissary, to calm the situation and thwart any idea of a Palestinian state. The motive remains the same, even though he publicly accepts the vision of the “New East” imagined by Trump./Corriere della Sera
