The signs have emerged for weeks. Israel called up two new combat brigades, have re-cleared key points in central and northern Gaza, and had even partnered with Egypt on building refugee camps near Khan Younis. After the collapse of Joe Biden's "Don't" doctrine in Iran and the refusal of Hamas to negotiate in anything approaching good faith on the hostages, Israel has no real choice but to end the war on military terms. 

Now they're making that clear, at least to the American officials that have tried to tangle Israel up for months:

The IDF is preparing to begin the ground operation in Rafah "very soon," beginning with a massive evacuation of over a million Palestinians, Kan 11 reported Tuesday evening, citing two American officials. ...

The IDF approved the latest plan for the Rafah operation at the beginning of this week after three previous plans were suggested. The US government has expressed firm opposition to an operation in Rafah without a credible plan to protect civilians. 

"We are preparing to establish a joint operation with the United States. We understand the concern, but we will not be able to complete the mission without entering Rafah, which could also help relieve pressure on the hostage issue," the official stated.

In other words, the Israelis didn't convince Biden's team to support the operation. And ... so what?

The US may not object too much, however, as Israel has apparently done some horse trading. Among the objectives in the next phase will be to use IDF troops to secure the land side of Biden's strange "Gaza pier" operation:

The mobilized brigades were to be placed under the 99th Division. During the first few months of the IDF’s ground offensive, the division had been tasked with the so-called Netzarim corridor in the central Gaza Strip, an east-west route.

One of the brigades will again be deployed to the east-west belt dividing the Strip in two, while the second will secure a pier being built by the United States on central Gaza’s coast aimed at boosting deliveries of humanitarian aid, according to Army Radio.

The corridor, built around a road south of Gaza City, enables the IDF to carry out raids in northern and central Gaza while allowing Israel to control access to the north for Palestinians seeking to return after fleeing south.

That certainly will relieve Biden of the embarrassment that would have resulted when Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad turned it into Mogadishu II. Biden initially claimed it wouldn't result in any American boots on the ground exposed to terrorist operatives, but that was absurd, Just the construction phase alone would require significant manpower on the ground to anchor and secure the pier. Aid distribution would require security, too, which is what Bill Clinton belatedly discovered in Somalia, and which set in motion the sequence of events that allowed local warlords to kick us out of Mogadishu entirely.

Apparently, the Israelis have agreed to let Biden off this particular hook by supplying the security for the pier and aid distribution on land. However, this raises another problem for Biden: if the Israelis control this aid distribution point, why bother with the pier at all? The ground lines of aid communication are also controlled by the Israelis, and they are more efficient for distribution than the pier will be, and easier to secure as well. The entire point of the Biden Pier was to bypass the IDF and deal directly with the Gazans -- which was an insane point to begin with, but that was still the intent. If the Israelis control the distribution at the pier, why not just skip it and stick to the land routes the Israelis already control?

Regardless, the Israelis will bail Biden out, likely in exchange for not interrupting arms sales while the Rafah operation unfolds. 'Unfolds' is the best term, according to reporting from the Wall Street Journal yesterday about the strategy and tactics the IDF will employ in Rafah. The real goal may be beyond Rafah, however:

Israeli leaders say they intend to go ahead despite vocal opposition from the country’s most important ally, the U.S., which has warned that a full-scale move on the enclave could cause widespread civilian casualties and disrupt humanitarian-aid efforts aimed at preventing famine. ...

The U.S. has urged Israel to accomplish its objectives in Rafah through precision strikes and targeted raids, hoping to avoid both the high civilian toll and widespread destruction in the rest of the Gaza Strip. The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office and Defense Ministry declined to comment on the bilateral talks. 

Experts say Israel won’t be able to destroy Hamas’s four remaining battalions without invading Rafah, but that a more important long-term strategic goal might be to take control of the Philadelphi Corridor, the narrow, eight-mile strip of land spanning the border between Gaza and Egypt. 

Hamas apparently sees it coming soon, too. They released a new hostage video today featuring 23-year-old Israeli-American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, the first proof of life of any hostages Hamas has released publicly in weeks:

Hamas has periodically published videos of hostages in an attempt to increase pressure on the Israeli government to agree to its terms and as a form of psychological warfare. In the past, hostages have been forced to read from scripts prepared by the terrorist organization.

In the video, Goldberg-Polin notes that he was hanging out with friends at the Nova Music Festival when Hamas attacked the festival and kidnapped him and his friends, countering claims that Hamas leaders have made in the past that they did not target civilians.

The choice of an American hostage is no accident. They want to provoke the US into vetoing any Israeli incursion of Rafah and prevent the destruction of Hamas. That may actually work, at least in terms of Biden and his team increasing pressure to demand more negotiations. However, with Hamas balking at any concessions in Qatar and Cairo, the manipulation here is too obvious -- and after Biden's weak "Don't" strategy flopped in defending Israel, the Israelis now know they have to secure their nation themselves. 

As for their other major goal ...

Hamas's chief in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, exited the terrorist movement's tunnels and met with the movement's forces aboveground recently, a senior source in Hamas told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed on Wednesday.

Sinwar "recently inspected areas that witnessed clashes between the resistance and the occupation army, and met some of the movement's fighters on the ground and not in the tunnels," said the source.

Yeah, well, Hitler popped out of his bunker long enough to greet some Hitler youth as the Russians began barreling into Berlin too. Hitler also used the civilian population to shield him as long as possible and sent children to the front lines to attack Russian forces. That didn't work and Hitler took the ultimate coward's way out in the end. The IDF would love to take Sinwar alive in Rafah, but they probably wouldn't mind finding Sinwar dead in his bunker too. 

In the meantime, the Gazans of Rafah still have a choice available to them. They can surrender the city to the IDF and turn over all of the Hamas operatives, if they wish to spare their city from the war that they started and cheered. Otherwise, it's game on, and likely in the next few days. 

Also, the latest episode of The Ed Morrissey Show podcast is now up! Today's show features:

• What does it say when Google has become fed up with progressive activism in its workplace? 
• Andrew Malcolm and I discuss the implications of the firing of more than two dozen radicals at Google's HQs and the CEO's declaration that disruptive politics will no longer be tolerated. Will this convince Google to abandon efforts to strangle conservative opinion on line? 
• We also discuss Joe Biden's latest failure to address campus anti-Semitism and the targeting of Jews in Academia.  

The Ed Morrissey Show is now a fully downloadable and streamable show at  Spotify, Apple Podcasts, the TEMS Podcast YouTube channel, and on Rumble and our own in-house portal at the #TEMS page!