Attacking the Palestinian city of Rafah during Ramadan will inflame resentment among Muslims around the world. Even talking about it is counterproductive.

The Jerusalem government announced that it would restrict access to the Temple Mount to Israeli Muslims during Ramadan. Photo: Jakub Porzycki/imago

Benny Gantz, precisely, announces an expansion of the Israeli offensive during the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan. If not all those deported to the Gaza Strip are released by March 10, Israel will expand the fighting to the entire coastal strip, including the border city of Rafah. The centrist Gantz was previously seen as a possible alternative to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should new elections be held.

In October, in the wake of the Hamas massacre, he joined Netanyahu's war cabinet. If his threat was intended to motivate Hamas to back down, he probably achieved exactly the opposite. “Do it,” Hamas will think and laugh up its sleeve. She doesn't give a damn about the well-being of the Palestinians.

Not so for Muslims around the world, whose hearts are saddened when, in everyday Ramadan, they have to watch their brothers and sisters in the faith be threatened and killed by Israeli ground troops. The Islamic month of fasting gives additional weight to their solidarity. And not only among the Palestinians in Berlin, New York, the West Bank and Jordan, but also, as expected, among the Houthis and Hezbollah.

As if that were not enough, the Jerusalem government announced that it would restrict access to the Temple Mount to Israeli Muslims during Ramadan. A precise regulation is still pending. But the restrictions planned by the racist Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, were enough to sow great resentment in the Arab sector and generate warnings of an intifada within Israel.

It would not be the first time that the chronic conflict over the Temple Mount would erupt into acute violence for trivial reasons. This is not the first time extremists have fanned the flames. Nothing more can be expected from Ben-Gvir. But Benny Gantz should think more carefully about what he says in public in tense moments like these.