The Philadelphi Corridor: Just How Important is It For Israel to Keep?

The Philadelphi Corridor is a strip of land — nine miles long, and 100 meters wide — that stretches along Gaza’s southern border with Egypt. For years, that border has been porous, and both through it and in the tunnels under it, Iran-supplied weapons have been delivered to Hamas. The Egyptians have done a poor job of policing the Corridor; some of them clearly don’t care if Hamas is getting Iranian weapons. The IDF has now seized and is holding onto the Philadelphi Corridor, which has become the key stumbling block, it seems, to a ceasefire-and-freeing hostage deal. Hamas insists that Israel give up its current control of the Corridor. Prime Minister Netanyahu refuses, claiming that without Israelis stationed along the Corridor, Hamas will go back to smuggling weapons into Gaza, to outfit its combatants for another assault on Israeli civilians, akin to that which took place on October 7.

Other Israelis, including some in the defense establishment, believe that Israel can give up its manning of the Philadelphi Corridor and can rely on other means to prevent its being used for weapons smuggling. Sensors placed in the ground along the Corridor could detect the movement of weapons into Gaza, replacing IDF soldiers. The United States could insist that it be allowed to intermittently — without prior announcement to the Gazans or to Egypt — send its own troops to inspect for signs of weapons in transit. So could Israel.

Defense Secretary Yoav Gallant is one of those who believes that Israel can give up the Philadelphi Corridor without running the dire risk that Prime Minister Netanyahu invokes, of a Hamas able to “rearm” and again to threaten Israel. So do Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, both of them former chiefs of Israel’s General Staff, who at a press conference on September 3 claimed that “the Philadelphi Corridor” is “not an existential threat” to Israel. They are much more worried, they insist, about the threat from Iran — now that Hamas has been shredded — and would like the Israeli government to concentrate instead on that much more dangerous threat, including that of a sudden nuclear breakout by Iran. More on their remarks, and on Prime Minister Netanyahu’s continuing belief that the IDF must no matter what hold onto the Philadelphi Corridor, can be found here.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim on Monday, that the IDF presence along the Philadelphi Corridor on the Gaza-Egypt border is imperative to Israel’s national security, is incorrect and an excuse to avoid a hostage deal due to pressure from his far-right partners, National Unity MKs Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot said in a press conference at Kfar Hamaccabiah on Tuesday.

The press conference came as a rebuttal of Netanyahu’s claim in a press conference of his own just 24 hours before, that Philadelphi was necessary in order to prevent Hamas rearmament, since the Gaza-Egypt border has for the past 20 years been the main corridor through which arms have been smuggled into Gaza by way of tunnels.

Netanyahu’s press conference included a map of Israel and Gaza with the Philadelphi Corridor marked out. In its place, Gantz presented a map of the entire Middle East, and argued that the real strategic threat was Iran, and the Philadelphi Corridor was a tactical issue that the IDF had sufficient answers for, including an underground barrier to block all tunnels.

Collapse in talks

Netanyahu argued that if Israel retreated from the Strip, international pressure would not allow it to be recaptured. Gantz responded to this by saying that “if Netanyahu is not strong enough to withstand the public pressure in order to return to Philadelphi – he should resign.”…

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The two press conferences, by Netanyahu on Monday and Eisenkot and Gantz on Tuesday, came after public fury erupted on Sunday following news that the bodies of six hostages who had been alive until last week had been retrieved from Rafah, in southern Gaza.

Members of the opposition and hostage relatives accused Netanyahu of being responsible for their deaths, due to his refusal to agree to a gradual withdrawal of IDF forces from the Philadelphi corridor on the Gaza-Egypt border….

One would like to know just how “gradual” that withdrawal of IDF forces from the Philadelphi Corridor would be. Would it go on for years, or just for months? It should not happen until the anti-tunnel barriers have been put in place. Would Israel — or the US — retain the right to inspect the Corridor without prior approval, to see if any smuggling of weapons through tunnels, despite those barriers, has been going on? If new Hamas tunnels are detected, would Israel retain the right to destroy them?

The IDF has killed not just Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, but the chiefs of staff of both Hamas (Ismail Haniyeh) and Hezbollah (Fuad Shukr), and launched a devastating preemptive strike on Hezbollah, destroying thousands of its rockets, with the loss of only one Israeli life. And it continues to kill dozens of Hamas fighters, including commanders, every day. But that record does not tell us how imperative it is for the IDF to retain immediate human – as opposed to sensors – control of the Philadelphi Corridor.

With two former chiefs of staff, Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, and Mossad director David Barnea all supporting giving up that control of the Philadelphi Corridor, in order to get back all of the hostages (and allow the Israelis to get back to work), and to allow Israel’s military to turn its full attention to Iran, there is a deep divide between those who maintain that it is imperative to hold onto the Corridor, and those who insist that it would be better to rely instead on sensors and underground barriers to tunnels. What’s that famous phrase? You be the judge.