Senior Israeli officials say that the issue of the Philadelphi corridor is solvable, as long as a solution is found based on the American proposal: a gradual withdrawal of forces from the corridor. The points of contention will be discussed again in Cairo, with Israel stressing that “progress is between us and the mediators. Hamas is currently not in the picture.”
The Philadelphi corridor offers Israel a measure of control over the entry of a huge cargo of weapons and ammunition which is amassed on the Egyptian side of the Gaza border, ready to be delivered to Hamas. This is why Hamas insists on the IDF withdrawal from Philadelphi, as well as from the Netzarim corridor that controls the future Hamas surge from the south into the central and northern parts of the Strip.
The senior Hamas official abroad, Osama Hamdan, said in an interview with the al-Arabi channel that “Israel withdrew even from the ideas proposed by the American administration, even though it announced in the past that it accepted them.” Hamdan emphasized that what happened in the negotiations in Qatar over the weekend was “an attempt to cultivate illusions to gain time.” Regarding the latest round of talks, he added: “It seems that Israel is not really interested in a ceasefire and that the American administration is unable and unwilling to act seriously to bring it about.”
This is Biden’s and Harris’s show, prepackaged for the DNC convention starting tomorrow.
They are pressuring PM Netanyahu to move forward with the outline drawn up by Biden. They won’t be stopped by the mostly pessimistic reports about the differences in key positions between Israel and the mediators, never mind Israel and Hamas––which isn’t even present there. They lie knowingly about the military presence and the technological means in the Philadelphi and Netzarim corridors. They’ve insisted on keeping the talks in Qatar going even though there’s no conceivable way to bridge Israel’s need to control both corridors effectively and Hamas’s existential need to push the IDF out of Gaza completely.
The White House is conducting this three-ring circus primarily to maintain the notion that the talks are still going on and to delay the unavoidable outcome when the talks collapse. They’ll start up a second series of talks next weekend, this time in Cairo, to maintain the illusion of ongoing negotiations. In the end, there will be no breakthrough, unless Netanyahu is persuaded to commit political suicide.
Nevertheless, Israeli officials are claiming that the Philadelphi point of contention is solvable, through the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from the corridor.
If it doesn’t make sense to you, you are not wrong. At the root of the “gradual withdrawal” proposal is the notion that the IDF would pause following each phase of force withdrawal to see whether Hamas is using the temporary lull in hostilities to smuggle weapons and ammunition from Egypt. And should Hamas “misbehave,” goes the argument, the IDF would quickly reinforce its presence along the corridor.
Therein lies the illusion, the false promise, the self-deluding which have been part and parcel of the security establishment’s sales job since the expulsion from Gush Katif in 2005. They’re always going to do things gradually, not to worry, and should push come to shove they would surely retake the territory.
PM Ariel Sharon’s plan, the “disengagement plan,” provoked a lot of opposition in the Israeli right and even in the Likud party. On March 30, 2004, at a conference of the Likud Center, Sharon’s proposal to put the plan to a referendum of the members was accepted. The plan was sent to about 200,000 members, and on May 2, 2004, the plan was rejected by a majority of nearly 60%. Following this, Sharon presented the “Amended Disengagement Plan,” which was identical to the original one, but included dividing the evacuation into four stages, each of which would require a separate government approval. Sharon managed to bully this “gradual” plan through a government vote, and, of course, in the end, there were no stages and no separate approval votes, 8,000 people were put on buses and that was that.
As of Sunday morning, despite the optimism expressed in Israel after the summit in Qatar, sources familiar with the negotiations say that the differences between the parties are still deep, especially on key issues such as the Philadelphi and Netzarim corridors, as well as the evacuation of IDF forces from the Gaza Strip.
For now, the administration is moving forward according to their plan, never mind the facts.
They hailed the Qatar summit as a success, regardless of its actual results. The Biden folks are busy controlling positive thinking about the Middle East and releasing optimistic, joyful forecasts, hoping some of the spaghetti will stick to the kitchen wall. President Biden ties the hostage and ceasefire deal in Gaza with the effort to delay Iran and Hezbollah’s revenge attack against Israel and insists there’s going to be a deal next week.
There won’t be.
