Half of the city of Rafah is in Israel, the other half is on the other side of the border, in Egypt, and Israel has just violated their treaty with Egypt by attacking the city with tanks and lots of bombs.
Egypt has responded so far with moving up anti-aircraft missiles and heavy equipment of their own, but no word yet of any actual attacks against Israeli forces. It’s reported that in a phone call between the two nation’s leaders before the assault on Rafah started, when Egypt demanded that Israel not attack, the response was “We took Gaza from you in 1967 and we’ll take Rafah from you now”.
I can’t verify the truth, or not, of that but after Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia all warned Israel not to launch their assault on Hamas in Rafah, they went right ahead with it anyway.
As I keep saying, Israel has nukes. As far as is known publicly, none of the Arab Muslim states do, and the Jews are not about to suffer another Holocaust without giving one in return. The primary issue the Arabs have with the attack on Rafah is that it will push a lot of the residents into Egypt that they want to stay in Israel to continue to be a threat to the Israelis and it’s now obviously a goal of Israel to do exactly that, push many of the “Palestinans” across their borders and out of their country.
Would Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia really risk a major war, let alone a nuclear one, to keep those people jammed up in Gaza and Rafah? It depends on the insanity of their leaders, who are Muslims and therefor not real sane anyway, but the US and UK will bring great pressure on them to restrain themselves while trying to get Israel to do the same.
The most likely outcome will be that Egypt makes a show of force and there may be some fighting between Egypt and Israel but not much. Egypt will have no choice but to open their border in Rafah with Israel, that separates the city in half, and let the Arabs on the Israeli side swarm through along with escaping Hamas members because only when Hamas is gone from Israel will Israel stop the war. If they don’t, the war will continue anyway and Egypt won’t want to suffer another disgraceful defeat.
Israel will end up adding all of Rafah to its territory and I’m betting a fair chunk of land past it as well, but at this point Iran may move directly against Israel, which has been spread pretty thin by now. They’ve been waiting long enough and they may try to nuke them.
Anything can happen over there. For right now, it’s getting a lot hotter. Whether it all explodes or not, we just have to wait and see.