New Delhi, Feb. 27 -- Rafah was once the third-largest city in the Gaza Strip. It was home to around 200,000 people. Today it is a desolate moonscape of rubble and twisted iron. The city and its suburbs were systematically destroyed by the Israel Defence Forces (idf) during the two-year war against Hamas. Rafah's population was forced to move to tents in squalid refugee camps on the coast which are now being battered and flooded by winter storms.

But to hear American officials talk, Rafah is about to become the bright new future of Gaza. The State Department recently posted a video showing it rising from the ashes. Boosters point to two Israeli engineering projects as evidence. First, the idf's one to destroy the labyrinthine network of ...