After all this, is Netanyahu still going to invade Rafah?

Killing seven aid workers in what looks remarkably like three deliberately-aimed drone-launched missile strikes - one after the other - might possibly make Binyamin Netanyahu think twice before ordering his troops into Rafah in southern Gaza for a full-scale fight with the remaining Hamas combat battalions, putting at risk, potentially, the 1.2 million Palestinian civilians trying to survive in camps in the area. I'm sure when he talks to Joe Biden on the phone today that is exactly the issue which the US president will raise. After killing seven aid workers, including three Britons, how can you even think of attacking Rafah and endangering more innocent lives, Biden will say. But I somehow doubt Netanyahu will give up on his intention to hit Rafah hard because he will say the future security of Israel depends on him annihilating Hamas. And in war, as he has already said, innocent people get killed. The trouble with this argument is that the Israeli leader is playing a dangerous game with the rest of the world. Israel always needs friends but right now it is losing friends fast. Imagine the images that will go around the world if civilians start dying in Rafah in large numbers. The killing of seven aid workers has provoked outrage in western capitals because it looked so deliberate. The idea that it was a grave mistake, as the head of the Israeli military said, is a difficult one to fathom when you hear the evidence and see the pictures of the three vehicles. So, for Netanyahu, he has to decide: to go all out to destroy Hamas in Rafah and risk terrible images emerging or to listen to Biden's entreaties and adopt a different approach, one that doesn't put civilian lives at risk.