Who controls the Philadelphi Corridor?
The 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel defined the border between them and limited the military equipment and forces the countries could deploy on either side. A further agreement signed in 2005 was specific to the portion of the border that edges the Gaza Strip. Egypt was allowed to bolster its border patrols, while Israeli forces withdrew. The Palestinian Authority took over administration of the border as well as the Rafah crossing under the watch of European Union monitors.
Just two years later in 2007, Hamas took over Gaza, and Israel, aided by Egypt, imposed a blockade that severely restricted the movement of goods and people across the border. That blockade was tightened after October 7. In a May offensive, Israeli forces captured the Philadelphi Corridor and the Rafah border crossing.
What is Netanyahu’s position on the corridor?
At a news conference on Monday, the Israeli PM pointed at a map of the Gaza Strip marked with icons of missiles, money bags and masked men. “The ‘Axis of Evil’ needs the Philadelphi Corridor, and for the same reason we must control the Philadelphi Corridor,” he said.
He has made the security argument before. But he added after the discovery of six more hostages’ bodies in Gaza on Saturday, withdrawing from the corridor would send Hamas a message: “Murder more hostages, you’ll get more concessions.”
However, privately, Netanyahu’s negotiating team offered to pull out troops as part of a phased agreement, according to three current and former officials from countries involved in the talks, in a move that confused mediators during the diplomatic effort. Speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy, the officials said on Monday, a senior Israeli negotiator told US, Egyptian and Qatari mediators Israel was willing to pull all of its troops out of the corridor during the proposed agreement’s second phase.
Israel’s spy chief David Barnea delivered the message, according to an Israeli official and another official from a mediating country briefed on the talks.
At a news conference for international media on Wednesday, Netanyahu reiterated that an Israeli presence in the corridor was central to Israeli security goals. He said the conditions for a permanent ceasefire must include a situation where the corridor “cannot be perforated”, and briefly suggested he was open to other alternatives to a security presence there.
“Somebody has to be there … bring me anyone who will actually show us - not on paper, not in words, not in a slide - but on the ground, day after day, week after week, month after month, that they can actually prevent the recurrence of what happened there before,” Netanyahu said. “I don’t see that happening right now … Until that happens, we’re there.”
Other vocal figures within Israel’s political and security establishment have downplayed the need for an Israeli presence in Philadelphi. They say the government should prioritise the return of the remaining hostages - and that Netanyahu’s demands reflect an effort to derail an agreement that could weaken him politically.
Last week, the Israeli cabinet voted in favour of an ongoing military presence within the Philadelphi Corridor, over the objections of Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.
“The cabinet decision indicated that Netanyahu is not interested in bringing the hostages home,” said Ephraim Sneh, a retired Israeli brigadier general and former deputy defence minister with the centre-left Labour Party. “There is no other interpretation.”
How does the corridor factor into a ceasefire deal?
Ceasefire talks have stopped and started and failed for months. In May, they restarted again, with US President Joe Biden announcing what he called an Israeli proposal for a three-stage process that would include the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners during a six-week ceasefire. It aimed to eventually pave the way to a permanent end to the war. The United Nations Security Council endorsed the plan. The Biden administration accused Hamas of holding it up.
In early July, Hamas dropped some of its hard-line demands, and Biden expressed confidence a deal was near.
But later that month, Israeli negotiators formally introduced new requirements, including that Israeli troops remain in the Philadelphi Corridor and at the Rafah border crossing.
Hamas has called that a non-starter. “Without the withdrawal [of Israeli forces], fully, from the Gaza Strip and especially from Netzarim and Philadelphi, there is no agreement,” Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya told Al Jazeera on Sunday.
On Tuesday, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said he was “not going to get into a debate” with Netanyahu over his recent comments about the corridor.
The deal put forward in May that Israel agreed to, Kirby said, includes the removal of the Israel Defence Forces from “all densely populated areas”, including those around or adjacent to the Philadelphi Corridor.
What is Egypt’s position on the corridor?
Although Egypt has played a mediator role in the Gaza ceasefire talks, “now, we’re part of the problem”, said a former Egyptian official familiar with negotiations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy.
Egypt feels slighted by what it sees as an Israeli effort to unilaterally change the terms of the peace treaty, said Ayman Salama, an international law professor in Egypt and a member of the Egyptian Council for Foreign Affairs, which advises the president.
Egypt also has its own national security concerns about an Israeli presence on the border, including that Israeli forces there could push Palestinians into Sinai, said H.A. Hellyer, a Middle East security analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Royal United Services Institute.
When Israeli security agency representatives visited Cairo two weeks ago, they spent a day meeting with Egyptian spy chief Abbas Kamel to discuss only the Philadelphi Corridor issue, rather than specifics of the hostage-for-prisoner exchange, the former official said. At one point last month, Egyptian mediators refused to pass along Israel’s latest proposal to Hamas because they objected to the border provisions so strongly.
Cairo has reacted angrily to Netanyahu’s suggestions it has turned a blind eye to weapons smuggling across the border. Egypt says under President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi over the past decade, it has destroyed more than 1500 smuggling tunnels and cleared an entire city to create a more than three-mile-wide militarised buffer zone on the Egyptian side of the border.
