For over a week, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have been engaging in heated battle with Palestinian terrorists in Gaza’s Shifa Hospital and the areas surrounding it. The terrorists have used the hospital as a base to reorganize, mere months after Israel weeded the terror group out of the compound and left the area unmonitored. The IDF has killed more than 170 terrorists in and around Shifa since the raid began, as well as apprehending 500 additional members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad and seizing weapons, ammunition, and funds earmarked for terrorist activities. According to Israeli security expert Seth Frantzman, “This makes [it] the largest number of terrorists found in one spot since the war began.”

The ongoing Shifa episode is a preview of what would befall all of Gaza if Israel does not carry out its Rafah invasion: Hamas’s remaining battalions would not be destroyed, and no consortium of IDF and international forces would be able to keep terrorism at bay. In the absence of a consistent monitoring presence, Hamas forces would slowly infiltrate the entirety of Gaza and amass more weapons and manpower in the areas abandoned by the IDF. Eventually, Israel would find itself in the same predicament it faced on October 7: confronted with a genocidal terrorist organization at its doorstep, poised to kill as many Israelis as possible.