Hamas is celebrating today. Not only did it kill six Israeli hostages just as Israeli troops were about to free them, thus inflicting a cruel psychological blow to the country, but it was almost certainly clapping its hands as hundreds of thousands of Israelis poured into streets across the nation calling for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to "bring them home."
But Netanyahu isn't going to give Hamas what it wants most of all: Israeli troops out of the Philadelphi Corridor — a spit of border land that separates Egyptian Sinai from the Gaza Strip that Hamas uses to smuggle weapons and explosives into Gaza. The way Netanyahu sees it, the war would be a failure if Hamas can rebuild its strength in a matter of months.
"The IDF has cleared the area, where military members found an extensive cross-border Hamas tunnel system—with some tunnels large enough to drive trucks through—that the group used to smuggle weapons into the enclave," reports The Dispatch.
“Hamas wants the Philadelphi Corridor because it wants to survive,” said Enia Krivine, the senior director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracy’s Israel program.
Why is Hamas demanding this concession from Israel? “It wants to rearm, and it wants to be able to return to a fighting strength again," said Krivine.
“The axis of evil needs the Philadelphi Corridor, and for that reason, we must control the Philadelphi Corridor,” Netanyahu said during a press conference on Monday evening.
Netahyahu's Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, doesn't see it that way. Gallant and other security chiefs have been pushing Netanyahu to give in to Hamas's demands. During a security cabinet meeting last week, Netanyahu reportedly told Gallant that he was prioritizing keeping troops in the Corridor rather than bringing the hostages home.
“The significance of this is that Hamas won’t agree to it, so there won’t be an agreement and there won’t be any hostages released,” Gallant said according to a transcript leaked to the Times of Israel.
Netanyahu replied, “This is the decision.”
Gallant again spoke bitterly to his ministerial colleagues, accusing them of abandoning the hostages by voting in favor of Netanyahu’s stance, adding he would vote against it. “You are making a decision that, if Hamas does not accept it, means you are abandoning the hostages,” he charged.
He again turned to the premier and asked: “If Sinwar presents you with the dilemma: Either you leave Philadelphi or you return the hostages, what do you do?”
Netanyahu responded that the imperative to keep the IDF at the corridor was of crucial importance to the state.
Gallant said that was all well and good if it was a decision taking in isolation. But, he asked, “What about when 30 lives are at stake? What do you do?”
Netanyahu's decision to fight to keep IDF troops in the Corridor has both political and strategic implications. Several smaller parties in Netanyahu's coalition have threatened to walk out of the government if Netanyahu stops short of destroying Hamas. In his speech on Monday evening, the prime minister reminded Israeli citizens what his war aims are.
Early in his prepared remarks, Netanyahu declared that Israel’s war goals are “to destroy Hamas, to bring back all of our hostages, to ensure that Gaza will no longer present a threat to Israel, and to safely return the residents of the northern border,” and asserted that “three of those war goals go through one place: the Philadelphi Corridor. That is Hamas’s pipeline for oxygen and rearmament.”
Projecting a map of Israel and Gaza on the wall behind him, Netanyahu noted that following the 2005 Disengagement, Israel controlled all of Gaza’s borders except the one with Egypt, and it was through that border that weapons reached the Strip.
Joe Biden, when reporters asked him if Netanyahu was "doing enough" to get the hostages released, said, "No." Technically, that's correct. Bibi could drop his demand that IDF troops maintain control of Philadelphi Corridor. He could also give in to other demands Hamas is sure to make once Netanyahu caves on the Corridor.
But it would have made the last year of war in Gaza an exercise in futility. Netanyahu's instincts are spot on — destroy the terrorists once and for all. But whether his countrymen have the stamina to match the prime minister's iron will remains to be seen.
