It’s impossible to say for sure how much has been changed by Israel’s dramatic hostage rescue in Rafah. But it’s clearly altered the conflict.

The fact that Israel wasn’t bluffing about going into Rafah, and the revelation to the world that the IDF had legitimate reasons to do so, convinced the other players in this conflict that the Israelis meant what they said and to prepare accordingly.

Hence we have a rather important story about the adjustments Egypt’s government is making for the possible influx of Gaza evacuees: An eight-square-mile walled camp is under rapid construction in the Sinai Peninsula, the Egyptian desert region that borders Gaza.

The history here is important. Rafah was divided between Egypt and the Ottoman Empire, briefly reunited after the Six-Day War, and then divided again when Israel pulled out of the Sinai. It became, and remains, the only border crossing between Palestinian-controlled territory and Egyptian-controlled territory.

Given the history, the last thing Egypt wanted to do was accept a large number of Palestinian refugees fleeing Gaza, and the last place they wanted to do it was Rafah, despite the fact that it would obviously save lives.

Egypt’s sensitivity toward an IDF operation in Rafah is twofold. One, tunnels running underneath have long plagued Egypt’s anti-smuggling efforts. (Though those efforts have gotten feebler over the years.) Two, Egypt does not want to take responsibility for any part of Gaza nor any Gazans. As Israel’s experience shows, that is a difficult entanglement to disengage from. Perhaps all the more so because of Rafah’s identity as a divided city.

The latter point has been a running theme of the broader Arab-Israeli conflict since 1967. Egypt does not want Gaza. Israel does not want Gaza (it went so far as to leave Gaza unilaterally, without a single guarantee about what the Strip would be used for thereafter). Hamas does not want Gaza—not in the traditional sense. Hamas does not want to govern the people of Gaza. It put all the Strip’s resources into building a second Gaza underground that is inaccessible to most Gazans, and it does not want statehood. There is nothing that Hamas wants, in fact, that is in any way beneficial to the Palestinians unless those Palestinians are members of Hamas (or UNRWA, the UN refugee agency that is essentially Hamas’s very own Learning Annex). Hamas is a terrorist army that is controlled and funded by non-Palestinian entities.

Who governs the Palestinians of Gaza after Hamas is thus a question of great consequence. Egypt does not want to be governing any Palestinians when that question is answered.

So when Israel announced it would have to send the army into Rafah to root out the remaining Hamas battalions there, Cairo raged—even though it would make no sense for Israel to give Hamas sanctuary in a war meant to destroy the terror group. Egypt even threatened its peace treaty with Israel, the sacred diplomatic breakthrough of the Middle East.

But Israel has a job to do, and part of that job is in Rafah. Egypt got the message, and though it says the evacuee camp in the Sinai is a last resort, Cairo seems to be treating its use as an inevitability. The Wall Street Journal reports:

More than 100,000 people could be accommodated in the camp, Egyptian officials said. It is surrounded by concrete walls and far from any Egyptian settlements. Large numbers of tents, as yet unassembled, have been delivered to the site, these people said.

With Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying his army will need to fight Hamas in Rafah, a Palestinian city on the Egyptian border, Egyptian officials think a broad Israeli offensive could happen within weeks.

In the event of a major exodus of Palestinians from Gaza, Egypt would seek to limit the number of refugees to well below the capacity of the area—ideally to around 50,000 to 60,000—Egyptian officials said.

Israelis have said from the beginning that the world was underestimating their resolve to destroy Hamas. But the world also underestimated Israel’s capabilities. Defying warnings to stay out of Rafah with a near-miraculous opening mission to save two hostages may have corrected both misunderstandings.