Netanyahu’s 48 hours of ‘Operation Philadelphia Corridor’: from a map without the West Bank to shifting war aims

Just a few months ago, many Israelis would have had difficulty explaining what the Philadelphia Corridor, the Gaza Strip’s border with Egypt (14 kilometers long and 100 meters wide), is. Partly because Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had barely mentioned it in the 15 years he has been in power almost without interruption, despite the fact that, as he now emphasizes – day in and day out – Iran has used it in recent years to introduce huge quantities of weapons for Hamas. After remaining silent for years, he has become the sole subject of his thoughts in recent days, to the point of offering two press conferences in just 48 hours, one in Hebrew and one in English, to show with maps (in which the West Bank does not appear) and a pointer why the fate of the Corridor “determines everything” about Israel’s “future.”

Despite its “immense importance,” Netanyahu did not order Israeli troops to take it in the first seven months of the war. Nor did the negotiating team, led by Mossad chief David Barnea, demand control of it in the ceasefire agreement proposal it presented on May 27, which spoke of a “complete withdrawal” from Gaza. The demand for a permanent military presence in the Philadelphia Corridor – which neither Defense Minister Yoav Gallant nor the top security officials see as necessary – entered the so-called “Netanyahu draft” at the end of July, according to the report. Yediot Aharonot, the Israeli newspaper that was able to consult it.

Although Netanyahu eventually resigned in the summer of 2005 as finance minister in Ariel Sharon’s government over his opposition to the withdrawal of Israeli settlers and soldiers from Gaza, he had voted in favour of it four times before in the cabinet and in parliament. The last time was in November 2004, when it was clear that such a measure would mean that the Philadelphia Corridor would be in the hands of Egypt on one side and the Palestinian National Authority on the other. He has not sent troops there in any offensives under his mandate either. He justifies this now by saying that he lacked the “national and international legitimacy to enter, conquer Gaza and retake the Philadelphia Corridor and the Rafah crossing” after the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023.

After that date, he began to raise the subject. But nothing compared to the ongoing media offensive. He called the first press conference on Monday, in the midst of outrage over the discovery in a tunnel in Gaza of another six hostages’ bodies (there were another six a week earlier). According to the Israeli army, they were killed by shots fired at point-blank range. Hamas suggests that the captors killed them and fled, sensing that a rescue like the one in May at the Nuseirat camp was imminent, accompanied by a massacre.

The 12 hostages were expected to return alive under a ceasefire agreement. Most of the last six were in fact on the list for release in the first phase of the agreement. “You were sacrificed on the altar for the defeat of Hamas, of Rafah, of the Philadelphia corridor,” said the mother of one of them, Almog Sarusi, at the funeral. Half a million Israelis (5% of the population) took to the streets to demand a pact and the main trade union centre organised a general strike. It failed, but it was the first in 11 months of war, with the ceasefire talks in a impasse the addition of the Corridor, as Hamas insists on complying with what was agreed before and rejects the retention of Israeli troops in Gaza.

Netanyahu responded that same day, at his first press conference: “No one is more committed than I am to the return of the hostages.” He wore the yellow ribbon on his lapel that symbolizes his support for their return, despite the fact that the Forum for Hostages and Missing Families has asked him to remove it, because his support is a “mirage.” At about the same time that he was saying that Israeli public opinion “overwhelmingly understands” his approach, Israeli public television broadcast the results of a survey. One of the questions was: Is it necessary to stay in the Corridor even if the price is that the agreement is blown up? 29% answered yes; 53%, no, and 18% did not give an opinion.

According to the prime minister’s account of the press conferences, both the protesters on Sunday and the countries criticizing the deaths, devastation and humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza are unwittingly fulfilling a Hamas plan from the beginning of the war. Netanyahu displayed a document in Arabic, which he presented as the “orders for psychological warfare” that troops found in January in “an underground Hamas command post.” Among the points: “Continue to blame Netanyahu,” “create internal discord and increase international pressure.” In reality, no one knows who wrote it: whether a commander, a militiaman or a civilian.

The document was the same at both press conferences. The war objectives were not. In Hebrew, Netanyahu addressed the tens of thousands of evacuees from the Lebanese border and millions of other Israelis with relatives there in uniform or fed up with watching on television the fires caused by the drones and rockets of the Lebanese militia Hezbollah. He claimed, wrongly, that the Cabinet had set four objectives for the invasion: “Destroy Hamas, bring back all our hostages, ensure that Gaza no longer represents a threat to Israel and return safely to the residents of the northern border. Three of them pass through one place: the Philadelphia Corridor.” The fourth was proposed by Defense Minister Yoav Gallant last week. Two days later, at the press conference in English with the foreign press accredited in the country, the fourth objective disappeared and there were three again.

Geographical accidents

The West Bank also disappeared from the map of the area he showed, as in others he has presented, the last one at the United Nations. A journalist asked him why and if it represented an official policy.

― “No,” he replied. “It does not include [tampoco] The Dead Sea is not shown on the map. I did not show the Jordan River. It is not on the map. Neither is the Sea of ​​Galilee…”

“Those are geographical accidents. There is a population living there,” the journalist interrupted.

― “I didn’t go into that, I was talking about Gaza. It’s a whole issue how we can achieve peace between us and the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria.” [nombres oficiales en Israel de Cisjordania, de origen bíblico]. That’s another press conference”

Israel has released a hundred hostages through negotiations, compared to only eight in military operations. It has just brought back 12 hostages in coffins who were alive until recently, and its troops killed, thinking it was a trap, three who were asking for help in Hebrew and wearing white sheets. Netanyahu insists, however, that recovering the hostages requires controlling the Philadelphia Corridor, because it “puts pressure on” Hamas to free them. It also prevents them from taking them on foot by land to the Sinai, in Egypt, and “ending up in Iran or Yemen,” even though Hamas has already had seven months to do so and it is assumed that it has not done so. Contro
lling this corridor, he argued, is also positive for Gazans, because it prevents “Hamas and other terrorist organizations from terrorizing them.”

In February, Netanyahu saw “total victory” in Gaza “within reach.” In April, the army was “one step away from victory.” Asked about this on Wednesday, he replied: “What I said, or what I meant, is that we were one step away from something fundamental that would pave our way to victory.” This was the invasion of Rafah, which resulted in “about two dozen” civilian deaths. “We believe,” he added, “that every civilian death is a tragedy.”

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