(JNS) Among the many components of the emerging ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, one issue stands out for its singular strategic significance: The eight-mile-long border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt.
Known as the Philadelphi Corridor, it served as the main smuggling route that enabled Hamas to amass the weapons it used to invade Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, murder some 1,200 people there and abduct another 251.
This is why the IDF took hold of the Philadelphi Corridor, which it had controlled for decades before the 2005 disengagement, during its 15-month-long campaign in Gaza. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed not to leave it, saying it was key to the war’s main objectives of dismantling Hamas and retrieving the hostages.
Yet the emerging ceasefire deal appears to feature, among other concessions to Hamas, an Israeli withdrawal from Philadelphi. Prominent geopolitical analysts told JNS this would allow Hamas to rebuild or even augment the military capabilities it has lost in the war that it started with Israel.
“It has enormous strategic importance,” said Daniel Pipes, president of the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum think tank. “If the Israelis control it, they would control Gaza. If they don’t control it, they don’t control Gaza.”
Following reports of an Israeli pullout of Philadelphi in international media, an unnamed government official told Channel 14 that the reports were inaccurate and that IDF troops would be deployed at the Corridor “until further notice,” as the broadcaster phrased it.
The misunderstanding, the official told Channel 14, may have stemmed from clauses in one of the ceasefire agreement’s drafts that spoke of an Israeli pullout from the corridor, but not in the first phase of the deal and, in all likelihood, not at all.
“Only if Hamas agrees to leave, then Israel would pull out of the Philadelphi Corridor,” military correspondent Tamir Morag said in summarizing what the official told him.
Meanwhile, Amichai Chikli, a Cabinet minister from Netanyahu’s Likud Party, on Thursday vowed to resign if “heaven forbid, there is a withdrawal from the Philadelphi Corridor” before achieving Israel’s war objectives, “or if we do not resume fighting to complete the war’s goals” at the end of the final phase of the ceasefire, as Chikli wrote on X.
According to details reported by Palestinian and Israeli media, the emerging deal will result in the return of 33 out of 98 Israeli hostages in Gaza in the first phase, which entails a 42-day ceasefire. It is not clear how many of those hostages are alive.
Israel would free 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, including many serving life sentences, during the first phase. If approved by Israel’s Cabinet, the ceasefire would go into effect Sunday, although that may be delayed until Monday.
According to some reports, Israel will gradually reduce its military presence in the Philadelphi Corridor during the first stage of the deal. The IDF would begin withdrawing from the corridor on the 42nd day of the first phase. The schedule for hostage releases in the second phase is yet to be determined.
Israeli forces will redeploy around the Rafah Crossing to Sinai, which is in the Philadelphi Corridor, according to agreed maps. Civilians would be allowed to return to almost all of Gaza without security checks. The IDF would leave most of the Gaza Strip and redeploy along the border with Israel.
Brig. Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser, a former head of the Israel Defense Forces’ Military Intelligence Directorate, doubted the narrative that has Israel holding onto the Philadelphi Corridor indefinitely.
“I’ve read the drafts and they say Israel will redeploy away from the corridor,” Kuperwasser, director of research at the Israel Defense and Security Forum, told JNS.
If even if Israel maintains a presence in the corridor yet pulls out of the Rafah Crossing between Egypt and Gaza, “it effectively means Israel can’t supervise traffic in the crossing, and that means it can’t prevent Hamas from rearming itself,” he said.
Kuperwasser also noted that the agreement lacks provisions that allow Israel recourse in case of violations, unlike the ceasefire agreement reached with Lebanon in November. “And it recognizes Hamas’s presence as the de facto ruler of Gaza,” he said.
Despite his satisfaction with the return of some hostages, Kuperwasser believes the deal is “full of flaws.
“We tried the military option but the IDF thought, unwisely in my opinion, that it’s not a good idea to remove Hamas by force, in part not to endanger the hostages. So we went to a painful deal because releasing so many hostages is just part of our DNA,” Kuperwasser said.
Egypt is a major factor working against an indefinite Israeli deployment in the Philadelphi Corridor regardless of the conflict with Hamas, said Jonathan D. Halevi, a senior researcher on the Middle East and radical Islam at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
“Egypt objects to an Israeli-controlled Philadelphi Corridor because without Israel it has more control over the border—and Gaza,” he said. In January 2024, Diaa Rashwan, chairman of Egypt’s State Information Service, said that Israel’s takeover of the corridor “would lead to a dire and major threat to the Israeli-Egyptian relationship.”
Israel could ignore the Egyptian rumblings, Halevi conceded. “But at what price? Egypt’s regime is rather brittle and vulnerable. If Israel disrespects it too much, it will fuel the opposition, possibly triggering a chain reaction with serious security consequences for Israel. Control over borders is a major issue also for Egypt, and Israel needs to tread lightly,” he said.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi rose to power in 2014 following a coup d’état he led that overthrew the short-lived reign of Mohamed Morsi, a politician affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas, which is also part of the Muslim Brotherhood movement, “greatly increased its arsenal and smuggling operations under Morsi,” Halevi noted. “Israel does not want a return to the times of Morsi,” he added.
Israel controlled the Philadelphi Corridor since 1967, when it captured Gaza, to 2005, when it unilaterally pulled out under then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s disengagement plan. That set the scene for Hamas’s takeover of Gaza from the Palestinian Authority in 2007, and the Strip’s transformation into a terrorist state.
Sharon attempted to retain control of the corridor under the disengagement plan, but the administration of then-U.S. President George W. Bush pressured Sharon to leave the corridor, according to a historical overview of the Philadelphi Corridor published this week by the Yachin Center for National Strategic Research, an Israeli think tank.
On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas had 50 smuggling tunnels, some large enough to drive vans through, that it dug under the Egyptian-controlled Philadelphi Corridor, wrote researchers Yair Kleinbaum and Yossi Halevi in the Yachin overview titled “The Philadelphi Corridor in the Test of Time.”
Hamas’s capabilities, they wrote, were “built through a combination of Israel’s negligent fatigue and Arab determined perseverance, ultimately leading to the [Oct. 7] attack, which was made possible through the extensive tunnels.”
Last year’s capture of the Philadelphi Corridor was the fourth time that the IDF took control of it. The previous three times, which ended in pullouts, were in 1949, 1956 and 1967.
There’s little reason to expect more effective anti-smuggling action by Egypt if Israel pulls out a fourth time, Halevi and Kleinbaum wrote.
“Egypt, and even more so various Arab bodies, should not be relied upon to control the Philadelphi Corridor and Rafah Crossing,” the researchers warned, citing not only Palestinian smuggling but the possibility of a confrontation with Egypt.
“From 1948 to 1967, Gaza was officially an Egyptian terrorist base,” they wrote. Due to Israel’s relinquishing of the Philadelphi Corridor, Gaza in 2023 had “arguably become an Egyptian smuggling and arms base,” they added.
