Ahead of the current operation in Rafah, the IDF seized the city’s border crossing, coming within three miles of Egyptian territory. In response, Egypt blocked all humanitarian aid trucks from entering Gaza. (Israel has since opened a new route for aid to enter the northern part of the Strip.) Cairo appears to be punishing Gazans to express its displeasure with Jerusalem, which it has warned against coming so close to its territory. It has also declared its support for South Africa’s spurious lawsuit against Israel at the International Court of Justice. Quite possibly, the IDF waited so long to seize this key border crossing because it didn’t want to upset its oldest Arab ally. Benny Avni examines the diplomatic fallout:

Israeli-Egyptian relations are more complex than they seem. Hamas’s ideological ancestor, the Muslim Brotherhood, is the main threat to President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s regime. Egypt has maintained close intelligence ties with Israel ever since Hamas seized Gaza in a 2007 coup. . . . Cairo’s weeklong blockage of aid trucks at the Rafah crossing accounts for much suffering inside the Strip, but it is rarely reported.

[One] likely dimension of Egypt’s growing tiff with Israel has to do with the IDF’s intention, announced shortly after the war was launched on October 7, to seize the entire nine-mile border between Gaza and Egypt, known as the Philadelphi corridor. Following its full evacuation of Gaza in 2005, Egypt deployed guards to its side of the nine-mile border with Gaza. The deployment, as part of an agreement with Israel, was designed to prevent smuggling of weapons and other illicit materials into Gaza. Yet, Hamas’s arms kept flowing in.

Israelis say that senior Egyptian officers are bribed to facilitate smuggling through tunnels at the Philadelphi corridor. The Egyptians “enabled endless amounts of weapons to go into Gaza underneath the border between Gaza and the Sinai,” a former IDF brigadier general, Amir Avivi, told the Sun. “We see what is going on in Gaza. We know where this all came from.”

Over the weekend the Associated Press reported that for the first time since signing the peace treaty in 1979, Egypt is considering a break in relations with Israel. Yet, perhaps as a sign that both the Israeli and Egyptian governments prize their ties, Cairo quickly shot down the story.

If there is to be peace, Palestinians will have to unlearn the hatred of Israel they have imbibed during nearly two decades of Hamas rule. This will be a difficult task, but Cole Aronson argues, drawing on the experiences of World War II, that Israel has already gotten off to a strong start:

The population’s compliance can . . . be won by a new regime that satisfies its immediate material needs, even if that new regime is sponsored by a government until recently at war with the population’s former regime. Axis civilians were made needy through bombing. Peaceful compliance with the Allies became a good alternative to supporting violent resistance to the Allies.

Israel’s current campaign makes a moderate Gaza more likely, not less. Destroying Hamas not only deprives Islamists of the ability to rule—it proves the futility of armed resistance to Israel, a condition for peace. The destruction of buildings not only deprives Hamas of its hideouts. It also gives ordinary Palestinians strong reasons to shun groups planning to replicate Hamas’s behavior.