Over the past two weeks, in nearly every public statement, Israeli leaders have made their future target in the war in Gaza clear: Rafah.

Gaza’s southernmost city sits astride the frontier with Egypt and is, according to Israeli officials, Hamas’ last redoubt after more than four months of devastating conflict that followed the militant organization’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

The city is also now home to more than 1 million displaced Palestinians, quadruple its prewar population, who fled from the shattered enclave’s north as Israeli ground forces moved in.

Even world leaders deemed supportive of Israel have voiced their concerns for Rafah and issued severe warnings to the Jewish state.

“We want Israel to stop and think very seriously before it takes any further action,” British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said Monday in an interview with Reuters. It is “impossible to see how you can fight a war amongst these people,” he said. “There’s nowhere for them to go.”

U.S. President Joe Biden’s statement to reporters Monday, during a joint appearance at the White House with King Abdullah of Jordan, was adamant.

“The major military operation in Rafah should not proceed without a credible plan for ensuring the safety and support ... of the people sheltering there. They need to be protected!” he said.

An especially sensitive consideration for Israel is its peaceful relationship with Egypt, an important intermediary with Hamas that often cooperates with Israel on Gaza security matters. In recent days, Egypt has reinforced its military presence along the border with Rafah and reiterated its longstanding position that people in Gaza should not be pressed into seeking refuge on its territory.

Hostages rescued in Rafah

Concerns for Palestinian civilians in Rafah were raised Sunday when Israeli special forces, backed by airstrikes, rescued two Israeli civilian hostages being held by Hamas militants in a building in Rafah.

More than 60 Palestinians were reported killed, including militants, in airstrikes that accompanied the rescue operation, but the Israeli forces withdrew. It was just a raid, not a prelude to the threatened incursion.

Israel Defense Forces/Reuters

Fernando Simon Marman (second from left) and Louis Hare (right) two Hamas-held hostages freed in an Israeli special forces operation in Rafah, reunite with loved ones at Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan, Israel, Feb. 12, 2024.

But Israeli officials, at least outwardly, are adamant that the launch of a large-scale operation is only a matter of time, and inevitable.

“Those who say that under no circumstances should we enter Rafah are basically saying lose the war, keep Hamas there. And Hamas has promised to do the Oct. 7 massacre over and over and over again,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told ABC News in an interview Sunday.

And yet, in a nod to international concerns, the long-serving Israeli leader added that he was working on a “detailed plan” to evacuate civilians “out of harm’s way” to unspecified areas in Gaza north of Rafah that the Israeli military has already cleared.

According to several Israeli officials, the focus on Rafah is not mere grandstanding, but a central military objective. The Israeli war plan called for an initial mass ground invasion of the northern Gaza Strip, followed by a southward push into the territory’s central regions and the city of Khan Yunis, just north of Rafah.

Now after dismantling over 18 of Hamas’ 24 battalions, according to Israeli estimates, much of the militant group’s remaining fighting force – four battalions – is in Rafah. As it is the last major population center still controlled by Hamas, the group’s senior leadership, including Yahya Sinwar, may be sheltering among, or in tunnels below, the masses of displaced civilians.

Focus on Egyptian border

But the biggest objective, from the Israeli point of view, is severing Hamas’ control over the border crossing and frontier with Egypt that is the enclave’s commercial and humanitarian lifeline.

Since Hamas’ violent takeover of Gaza in 2007, the group has been able to easily smuggle in arms above and below ground, as well as tax goods entering from Egypt.

“To achieve your war aims, you have to take care of Rafah. It’s the main source that turned Hamas from a nuisance into a monster,” says Michael Milshtein, a former Israeli intelligence officer and expert on Palestinian affairs. “Without Rafah you haven’t done anything.”

Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters

Palestinians wait to receive food cooked by a charity kitchen amid shortages of food supplies, in the overcrowded Egypt-Gaza border city of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, Feb. 13, 2024.

And yet with 60% of Gaza’s 2.2 million people crammed into homes, tents, and makeshift shelters, “Rafah is more complicated now, and Egypt is reacting,” adds Dr. Milshtein. “Israel is very concerned by Egypt’s reaction and is sensitive to it.”

Egypt has warned that any Israeli move into Rafah could see desperate Palestinians try to breach the border wall and flee into its territory – a scenario Cairo has warned would be a “red line” which could shake the foundations of the 1979 peace treaty it signed with the Jewish state.

President Biden, on Monday, reiterated his staunch opposition to “any forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza.”

For these reasons, and despite the tough public rhetoric, one person familiar with Israeli deliberations said there was as yet no plan to launch a major ground operation in Rafah.

“The [Israelis] don’t know what they want to do, and there’s lots of confusion surrounding Rafah,” the person added, alluding to the grave concerns cited by both the United States and Egypt.

For any such operation to move ahead, two Israeli officials said, a mass evacuation plan from Rafah would first have to be formulated and then implemented.

“There’s no reality that we don’t deal with Rafah, since we need to make sure the [Hamas] military wing doesn’t go back to what it was, and that they’re demilitarized,” says one senior Israeli military officer. “The question is how you deal with it.”

From her tent in Rafah, Mirvat Alsaid learned the fate of her Gaza City home.

Watching an Al Jazeera broadcast from northern Gaza City on her phone two weeks ago, she recognized the neighborhood and the very street where her family’s Al Malish No. 9 apartment building once stood.

The camera panned to its location, revealing a pile of concrete and steel. The family’s home had been reduced to ruins by an Israeli missile. They had five years left on the 12-year loan they took to buy the apartment.

Now she and her nine children and grandchildren share a makeshift nylon tarp tent on a dusty patch in Rafah that is “cold, dry, and unwelcoming.” The winter storms “hit us harshly, especially at night,” says Ms. Alsaid. Her daughter Majd has fallen ill with a severe cough, fever, and fatigue.

After being displaced nine times in less than 100 days, Ms. Alsaid cannot imagine relocating once again.

As panic grips Rafah over Israel’s declared plans for a military offensive against Hamas in the southern city, the Alsaid family and tens of thousands like them have nowhere left to go. Tired, wary, ill, and broke, they say they cannot make the journey, even if they had safe passage to shelter in a new destination.

“I hope this is the last time I pack my tent,” Ms. Alsaid says. “I am so tired.”

With more than 75% of the 2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza displaced and the Israeli military offensive having damaged or destroyed 60% of housing in the besieged enclave, according to the United Nations, shelter has become the top, urgent need for Gaza residents.  

As families struggle with a lack of tents and winter clothing, the prospect of a homeless postwar future looms over their battle to survive in the present.

Ghada Abdulfattah

Children collect dirty well water in jerrycans to sell or boil and use at home in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, Feb. 8, 2024.

Tent economy

The U.N. estimates, as of press time, that a minimum of 650,000 Gaza residents, nearly one-third of the population, would have no home to return to should the Israel-Hamas war end today. 

Around 100,000 families across Gaza are in need of immediate shelter support, particularly winter tents, the U.N. said this week.

The U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Monday that 28,000 tents are in the pipeline to be delivered to Gaza. But it remains unclear when they will arrive, how they will be distributed, and if they could reach families should an Israeli military operation commence in Rafah, the entry point for international aid.

The few standing apartment units available to rent – a rapidly decreasing commodity in Gaza – go for a minimum of $1,500 a month for 120 square meters, 10 times the prewar rate.

Waterproof tents donated by Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and other countries are a prized possession.

Yet many of the fortunate few who receive these tents are forced to sell them for cash to pay for food, wood for cooking, and medicine. Once sold, the donated tents are hard to buy back.

At the market in Deir al-Balah, the central Gaza town that has become the second-largest evacuee epicenter, venders this week sold these donated waterproof tents for $2,000-$2,500 each. The price is rising week on week as the number of displaced people rises.

With each displacement, Gaza families are fleeing with less and less, leaving behind the last of their earthly possessions and using up their final reserves of cash.

Ghada Abdulfattah

Citizens, many displaced evacuees from Gaza City, browse for food, clothing, and raw materials to craft tents at the market in Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza, Feb. 8, 2024.

Dalia Nahhal, a mother of four and Gaza City native, has evacuated six times following Israeli military orders. She’s escaped encroaching Israeli artillery shells and airstrikes from Gaza City to Deir al-Balah to Khan Yunis, and finally to Rafah, where she is sharing a room with other families at the home of a distant relative.

Along the way, airstrikes destroyed her home and her car, and killed several family members.

In one hurried 1 a.m. evacuation from a Gaza neighborhood amid missile strikes, she forgot to take most of their belongings, grabbing only some light clothes for her and her children. 

“Every moment I wonder: What more I will lose? I lost my house, my memories, the sense of safety,” Ms. Nahhal says. “The feelings of displacement and anxiety never go away; it is difficult to sleep. The nightmares haunt us night and day.

“I fear a ground invasion,” she confides. “I don’t know where to go.”

Urgent Facebook appeals

Many Palestinians uprooted by recent Israeli offensives on Khan Yunis, a previously designated safe zone, are arriving in Rafah with nothing, and are finding no shelter. Even to assemble a tent, families need cash to buy used animal feed bags, tarps, and wood. 

Many resort to appeals on social media for tents and clothes from fellow Gazans.

On Facebook, mother Hanan Khashan wrote, “I need a tent for my family in Rafah. Who can help me in this matter? They have children and the situation is difficult.”

Days later she updated her post: “Thank you to the brave and kind people in Gaza. We have been helped.”

In the Facebook group Deir al-Balah Now, an anonymous poster from Gaza City who had been displaced from Khan Yunis wrote, “To the people of Rafah, I need someone to help us. Two days ago, the Red Crescent [hospital] was bombed overhead and we were injured and displaced to Rafah.

“We are currently in the streets, sleeping on sand, not even in a tent. We cannot find anyone to help us. We have no food or clothes to keep warm. I swear we are so tired.”

Ghada Abdulfattah

A former school for vocational training is now a shelter housing more than 2,000 evacuees from different areas in the Gaza Strip, in Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza, Feb. 4, 2024.

The few standing physical evacuee centers are overflowing.

Ruwaida al-Banna, her husband, two daughters, son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren live in a small makeshift tent of nylon plastic sheets hung with rope, set among disused heavy machinery at a cramped vocational training center-turned-shelter in Deir al-Balah.

It is their fourth location since they left their Gaza City home in October, heeding Israeli military orders.

They share the center with 2,000 other people. There are long waits for water and to use the bathroom.

Even inside the center, there is a cold, damp chill. Ms. Banna wraps in her prayer rug for warmth; her husband curls atop a blanket on the bare floor.

“We spend our nights on the cold ground and our days in anxiety and uncertainty,” she says.

“Sabra, Rimal, Jalaa, Tal Hawa, Zaytoun, Shujaiya,” Samer, her son, rattles off the name of Gaza City’s neighborhoods. “All the Gaza neighborhoods have been destroyed. The impact is everywhere.”

Even when families in Gaza secure shelter and there is no immediate threat of a missile strike or an Israeli military ground invasion, unanswerable questions linger.

“Even if the war ends now, we have lost our homes and belongings,” says Ms. Nahhal from Rafah. “My family’s house is gone; all my friends have lost their homes, too. Even if we can return to Gaza City, where will we go?”

To many outsiders, Myanmar appears to be locked in a bloody stalemate. The ongoing civil war has killed more than 4,000 people and left 2.6 million displaced within the country, according to United Nations estimates. Every third person – about 18.6 million people – now requires humanitarian aid, a nineteenfold increase since the February 2021 military coup that overthrew Myanmar’s elected government. 

But as the war enters its fourth year, there are signs of a shift. 

This weekend, the junta announced that it would start enforcing a 14-year-old compulsory military service law, effective immediately. The draft comes as Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the country’s military ruler and architect of the 2021 coup, faces calls to step down after a wave of humiliating losses to allied resistance groups.

Indeed, the military has lost control of scores of towns and military bases in recent months. These advances don’t necessarily spell victory for Myanmar rebels, but they are weighing on the junta – and reinvigorating the resistance.

Karen Norris/Staff

Where have the rebels made gains?

The junta faces many enemies, including pro-democracy groups formed by civilians after the coup and various armed ethnic groups that have long fought for autonomy. Historically, these different groups have fought alone, planning attacks and negotiating cease-fires in relative isolation. 

The status quo started to shift in October, when three insurgent groups known as the Three Brotherhood Alliance launched “Operation 1027” to take on junta troops in northern Shan state near the border with China. Analysts say the operation had tacit backing from Beijing, which wanted to punish the junta over its failure to curb online scams operating out of Myanmar. The campaign was incredibly successful. Within days, the alliance captured more than 50 junta bases and shut down major border crossings. 

Reuters/File

Myanmar's junta chief, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, who ousted the elected government in a coup on Feb. 1, 2021, presides at an army parade on Armed Forces Day in Naypyitaw, Myanmar, March 27, 2021. With Gen. Min Aung Hlaing at his weakest position since the coup, some speculate that he could be replaced with another senior military officer.

Other armed groups, including the Chin National Army, supported the operation by launching attacks around their own areas of control, forcing the junta to respond on multiple fronts. As the parallel offensives gained momentum, the junta witnessed some demoralizing defeats. In late January, hundreds of junta soldiers fled across the border to India, and many more have surrendered in the face of bold ground and drone attacks. 

The National Unity Government, an anti-junta body that oversees many of the newer civilian groups, claims that junta opponents now control 60% of the country. That control remains largely peripheral, with rebels failing to claim a single central city or major military infrastructure. 

What challenges do resistance groups face?

While resistance groups have demonstrated their ability to mount coordinated attacks, they are still fractured and lack a central command. Most work for their own goals, which do not necessarily resonate with other groups. 

“The resistance is faced with the difficult task of crafting a shared political vision,” says Angshuman Choudhury, a former associate fellow at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi. “This is not an easy task in a country with hundreds of ethnic groups and subgroups.”

On top of that, fighters continue to deal with ammunition and weapons shortages, whereas the junta has critical access to heavy weapons, mainly from Russian suppliers. Nevertheless, resistance leaders say there will be more surprise strikes against the junta this year. 

Jintamas Saksornchai/AP

A camp for people displaced within Myanmar is seen across the Moei River from Mae Sot in western Thailand, Feb. 8, 2024. Myanmar's civil war, now in its fourth year, has displaced millions.

“The resistance groups have never been so strong against the junta,” says Ram Kulh Cung, a Chin National Army commander. “There is some sort of coordination between the resistance groups, and we are working towards making it better and much stronger with one aim – to throw the junta out of power and restore democracy.”

How is the junta responding?

Despite growing frustration among the ranks, the junta is not giving up. 

Militarily, its focus “has been to both reclaim fallen towns and degrade resistance assets,” says Mr. Choudhury. “It continues to rely on airstrikes and artillery offensives against civilian populations in order to cut them off from the resistance groups. It has also adopted an online counterpropaganda program to discredit the resistance among the masses.”

How the junta is responding internally is less clear. The junta has not addressed criticism directly, but it did activate the military draft and extend Myanmar’s state of emergency for another six months to restore “a normal state of stability and peace,” according to a military-run media outlet. This confers Gen. Min Aung Hlaing legislative, judicial, and executive powers and will further delay elections. Yet with Gen. Min Aung Hlaing at his weakest position since the coup, some speculate that he could be replaced with another senior military officer.

What is evident, say analysts, is that the junta is doing damage control, and hope for rebel victory – and postwar stability – rests on its opponents’ ability to continue cooperating.

Grace Champagne makes $18.50 an hour, plus a portion of tips, working as a host at a chain restaurant. That’s nearly $2 over minimum wage in San Diego, where she goes to school. In this tight California job market, the college student asked for the hourly bump, and got it. The extra bit goes into Ms. Champagne’s savings  to eventually help repay college loans. 

“It seems like a small difference, but it makes a really big difference,” says Ms. Champagne, who struggles to keep up with California’s high cost of living.

Across the United States, workers like Ms. Champagne are seeing an uptick in hourly wages. Twenty-two states raised their minimum wages last month, affecting nearly 10 million workers. Many of these increases were in the works years ago, as part of multiyear legislative packages. Some states tie the increases to inflation. Others, mostly in the South and Midwest, follow the federal minimum of $7.25 per hour, which hasn’t changed since 2009. The wide variances create a cross-country picture that is at once mixed and nuanced.

The notion of having a minimum wage, say experts, is to have a pay floor that allows for a basic living standard. That living standard, however, varies from city to town and from state to state. Work philosophies and politics also come into play. 

“It really is a reflection of what the body politic in the jurisdiction feels is the minimum that they would like to see any worker in that jurisdiction be paid per hour,” points out economist Jerry Nickelsburg, director of the University of California, Los Angeles’ Anderson Forecast.

SOURCE:

Economic Policy Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Living Wage Calculator 

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Jacob Turcotte/Staff

Closing the gap

State minimum wages have risen faster than inflation for many workers since 2009, despite stagnation in federal policy. But across the country, minimum wages still fall consistently below what economists call living wages – the amount needed to meet a person’s, or family’s, basic needs. 

While many minimum wage workers are unskilled teens, the vast majority of workers who benefit from minimum wage hikes are over the age of 20, according to research by the Economic Policy Institute. 

The living wage varies widely among jurisdictions, driven in large part by the cost of housing. The states where minimum wages are highest are the same states where, despite higher costs, the lowest wage earners are within reach of a living wage. Alternatively, the states with lower costs also tolerate the lowest minimum wages – and have the largest gap for low-wage workers to make up. 

“We still have large numbers of workers who do not earn enough to meet their family’s basic needs,” says Ken Jacobs, who co-chairs the University of California, Berkeley’s Labor Center. He adds, “The preponderance of academic research finds that minimum wage laws do what they’re intended to do. They improve low-wage workers’ earnings, which has a full range of positive impacts, both on workers and on society.” 

Connecticut has the narrowest gap between minimum and living wages: A single person with no children working full time at $15.69 per hour is 12% shy of a living wage. Georgia, where the minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, has the largest gap: 59%. In all states, the gaps are much bigger for workers with children. 

Damian Dovarganes/AP

Fast-food workers Angelica Hernandez (left) and Ronalda Alcazar Cruz celebrate Sept. 28, 2023, in Los Angeles after California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the fast-food minimum wage increase legislation that takes effect April 1.

Intervention at the policy level, says Professor Jacobs, recognizes an ongoing, outsize power that employers hold in the workplace. The more workers earn, the more they spend in the local economy, “and that’s good overall, for our local economies, and it’s vital for workers to be able to meet their basic needs,” he says.

“Ready to give up”

California’s minimum wage is $16 per hour, with some cities raising it higher ($19.08 in West Hollywood). The state calls on specific industries, also, to raise their wages in the months and years ahead: In April, California’s fast-food workers go to $20 per hour, and by 2026, health care workers will make at least $25 per hour.  

Business owners here say that they are feeling squeezed. With the country’s low 3.7% unemployment rate, many businesses are already paying above minimum wage for jobs that historically fit that category. The increased labor cost, added to a jump in costs for goods, insurance, and other operational expenses, means that many employers are struggling to emerge from a pandemic slump that caused many to shut their doors for good.

Damian Dovarganes/AP

A customer picks up a meal bag at a McDonald's drive-thru window in Los Angeles, Sept. 28, 2023. California will raise the minimum wage for fast-food workers to $20 per hour next year, an acknowledgment that many in the low-pay workforce are primary earners for their households.

The landscape, in a word, is uncertain, according to John Kabatek, California director for the National Federation of Independent Business. 

“Small-business owners in California are frightened, scared, and frustrated that policymakers are doing next to nothing to help them emerge from that COVID hole,” says Mr. Kabatek. “Add to that the legislature’s inaction on retail theft and property crimes, and small-business owners have good reason to feel ... ready to give up.”

Lumber and hardware store owner Jeff Pardini says those minimum wage hikes translate to increased costs across the board. It’s “death by a thousand cuts,” he says.

Back in San Diego, Ms. Champagne says she and her friends are still having a tough time keeping up with expenses. Those who work in the fast-food industry, especially, are looking forward to the April pay raise. 

She says she needs her job – and would work at the lower rate, but the extra bit is a big help. “Before I was waiting on checks to be able to get gas and do other things,” she says. “But with this, I have a little extra wiggle room.”

REUTERS

Dancers perform during a campaign rally for Ganjar Pranowo, presidential candidate of the ruling Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), in Semarang, Central Java province, Indonesia, Feb. 10.

Indonesia, the world’s third-largest democracy, holds an election Feb. 14 that will shape the future of the Southeast Asian giant. The stakes are as serious as ever. Three candidates are vying to become president and have engaged in the usual hard knocks of politics. Yet for the average Indonesian, election campaigns have long been useful for something else.

They are an opportunity for joy, or what is known as pesta demokrasi (democracy fiesta). With a population spread over thousands of islands, Indonesia is well known for its diverse culture of performances – expressive dances, puppetry, dramas, music, and costumes. That doesn’t stop for elections. Campaigns are like theater or celebrations, with citizens as spectators.

Take, for example, the leading presidential candidate, Prabowo Subianto, a former army general who once suppressed pro-democracy activists under a former dictator. He has gained popularity with young people by dancing on a stage like a silly grandfather. Another candidate, Anies Baswedan, a former governor of Jakarta, caters to fans of K-pop by using TikTok to reveal details of his personal life.

In past elections, local officials have spruced up voting booths with themes, such as a spooky house, to help increase voter turnout. For this election, the exuberance of campaigning – especially in the number of banners, posters, and flags – has been so vast that local officials have been told to recycle campaign props, not dump them as waste in landfills.

The boisterous bounty of party fun serves a purpose. The current president, Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, who enjoys a huge popularity, says he does not want Indonesia’s democracy to become a war zone. A country so big and diverse cannot afford ugly identity politics, divisive disinformation, or campaign violence. Ensuring joy in campaigns is part of an antidote to all that.

“The pesta demokrasi (fiesta of democracy) is a cause for celebration not only for Indonesia, but also for democracy and forces for peace all over the globe,” India’s ambassador to Indonesia, Sandeep Chakravorty, wrote in The Jakarta Post.

This election, in which some 204 million voters will choose more than 20,000 representatives, is one of the world’s most complex. For the sake of national harmony, elections must be a “consolidating event,” Jokowi said.

“We cannot afford to let the candidates have good relations, while their supporters, including those in regions, are still fighting each other,” he said last year. An election, he added, “is a festival for the people, an occasion that is supposed to bring joy rather than anxiety.”