Netanyahu puts management of the border between Egypt and Gaza in his sights

As the Israeli army intensifies military and humanitarian pressure in southern Gaza and discussions about the future of the Strip continue, the narrow corridor that runs along the border between the Palestinian enclave and Egypt is taking on more important. Israeli authorities claim that the Palestinian Hamas movement is bringing weapons and people through this demilitarized crossing, known as the Philadelphi Corridor, and in recent weeks they have openly expressed their goal of exercising greater control over that point. But its status is regulated by the 1979 peace agreement between Egypt and Israel, and its management has important implications for the security architecture of the area, the blockade of Gaza and the relevance of Egypt in the Palestinian issue.

In recent weeks, the future of this strategic access corridor to Gaza has once again gained attention, becoming the center of rumors and leaks to Israeli and Arab media. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated this Saturday his intention to close the axis. “The Philadelphi Corridor, or, to put it more correctly, the southernmost point [de la Franja], it must be in our hands; it must be closed,” he had said in December, according to Reuters. “Any other arrangement would not guarantee the demilitarization” of Gaza that his country is pursuing, he added at the time.

One of the main provisions of the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel was the end of the Israeli occupation of the Sinai, which the Jewish state had captured along with Gaza during the 1967 war. The agreement divided the peninsula into four security zones, with various degrees of military deployment permitted for both sides. Three of them are in Egyptian territory and one in Israel and Gaza. In 2005, as part of the plan to withdraw the Israeli army and settlers from the Strip, Egypt and Israel signed an arrangement under which an Egyptian Border Guard force would be deployed on the Egyptian side of the border with the Palestinian enclave. to deal exclusively with issues of smuggling, infiltration and terrorism, while Israel would withdraw from the Philadelphi corridor.

Any amendment to this arrangement requires the agreement of the Egyptian and Israeli parties, as has happened on three occasions: in 2007, the year in which Hamas took control of Gaza, and in 2018 and in 2021, within the framework of the Egyptian anti-terrorist campaign in the Sinai. Israel also proposed reoccupying the Philadelphia corridor in previous military campaigns in the Strip, despite the fact that the Sinai and Gaza are separated by two walls and that, a decade ago, Egypt created a five-kilometer-deep buffer zone along the Palestinian enclave, on the only one of its borders that Israel does not control.

“The only explanation for such claims is that, perhaps, Hamas is using tunnels to enter the Sinai and hide, and that, perhaps, weapons continue to arrive. But there is no evidence and this defies the last 10 years of Egyptian heavy hand in the border area, which is now completely militarized and where nothing enters. It is completely monitored and controlled,” says Mohannad Sabry, an Egyptian security expert in the Sinai.

The spokesman for the armed wing of Hamas, Abu Obaida, assured in a speech on the Qatari channel Al Jazeera on the occasion of the 100th day of the Israeli offensive in Gaza that the weapons they use are manufactured by the brigade. Along these lines, the director of the Egyptian State Information Service, Diaa Rashwan, who in recent months has acted almost as an official spokesperson, has recently described as “nonsense” the accusation that Cairo allows or facilitates the smuggling of weapons to Palestinian resistance factions.

Sensors to control the tunnels

In early January, the American newspaper Wall Street Journal reported, citing senior Egyptian officials, that Israel has asked Egypt to install sensors along the corridor to monitor attempts by Hamas to rebuild a network of smuggling tunnels between Gaza and the Sinai, as well as the right to send surveillance drones to the area if such activity was detected, something that Cairo would have rejected. For now, Egypt has refused to discuss greater Israeli oversight and is prioritizing negotiation efforts to reach a ceasefire, Reuters reported citing Egyptian sources.

Egyptian media close to the intelligence service have also denied that there is cooperation with Israel on the corridor and Rashwan has warned that its occupation would violate the peace treaty with Egypt and that Cairo will defend its security if the Israeli army tries to recover it. At the same time, official media have assured that the corridor is located in Palestinian territory, so a possible Israeli occupation would not constitute an invasion of Egyptian sovereignty, which represents a thornier issue. Egypt has rejected greater Israeli supervision in the area to prioritize ceasefire negotiation efforts, Reuters reported citing Egyptian sources.

“The idea of ​​reoccupying the Philadelphi corridor is completely political,” Sabry slips. “In the last, perhaps, 20 years, Israel has had no idea how to evaluate the evolution and growth of Hamas's military capabilities, and that is why we hear these statements [sobre el futuro del corredor] of ministers and political officials, not of military officers or commanders,” he adds. “If there was any military merit to it, we would have seen much more talk about it in Israeli military and security circles,” he believes.

The Sinai Foundation for Human Rights, an Egyptian organization, has stated that in recent weeks Egyptian authorities have dismantled watchtowers adjacent to the Philadelphi Corridor and rebuilt them further west, within Egyptian territory. The organization, which has also published images and videos of this area, assures that the border fence that separates Egypt from Gaza has also been reinforced with a concrete wall and mounds of earth.

The Philadelphi corridor is also key for humanitarian operations, because in the middle of the axis is the Rafah border crossing, through which the total siege on Gaza imposed by Israel at the beginning of its last military aggression could be broken, although Humanitarian aid has continued to flow in dribs and drabs due to the obstacles posed by Israel, which has bombed the border area on several occasions, always on the Palestinian side.

Today, the Rafah crossing, in southern Gaza and next to the border with Egypt, is the main refuge for those displaced by the Israeli army's offensive in the Strip and its relocation orders. Currently, it hosts more than a million people crammed into a space that the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) describes as “extremely overcrowded.” And in recent days, the Sinai Foundation has released videos and photos showing tents of displaced Palestinians already a few meters from the Philadelphi axis, which increases fears of a possible mass expulsion of Gazans as part of an alleged ethnic cleansing of the Strip. .

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