According to multiple top sources, Israel has purportedly hinted or explicitly told Hamas, the US, Qatar, and Egypt several times in the last three months that it would be willing to withdraw from the all-important Philadelphi Corridor in Rafah, Gaza, to get back Israeli hostages from Hamas.
Various media have leaked that Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, the IDF high command, Mossad Director David Barnea, Shin Bet Director Ronen Bar, and IDF Maj.-Gen. and hostage recovery coordinator Nitzan Alon, at least as of July, had already favored making such a concession, including an extended broad ceasefire, to bring back the hostages.
Yet, every time a narrative starts to take hold in the media that Israel has conceded this point, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu goes public with his unequivocal rejection of such a concession.
No anonymous leaks or round-about private statements behind closed doors, but clear public dismissals.How can this whiplash be explained?
First of all, sources told The Jerusalem Post over time that positions on these issues have evolved.
When the IDF first took control of the Philadelphi Corridor in Rafah in early and mid-May, no one was excited about giving it up.
At the time, there were at least two major reasons: to prevent Hamas from having any future capability to rearm itself via cross-border smuggling from Egypt and, more pressingly, to have enough time to destroy the existing smuggling tunnels.
In late June, shafts connected to cross-border tunnels in the Philadelphi Corridor in Rafah showed clearly that the military was not even close to discovering the full scope of Hamas’s byzantine tunnel maze in the area.
Officers told the Post at the time that it could take six months to get a full handle on the situation and possibly years to destroy all of the Hamas tunnels in Rafah.
On Thursday, the IDF announced the destruction of 50 sections of tunnels, following previous similar announcements.
These are already significant accomplishments that substantially reduce what Hamas could smuggle into Gaza from Egypt if the IDF withdrew from the area for 40-60 days, as would be anticipated in Phase I of the proposed hostage deal and Gaza ceasefire.
So, in only three months, Israel has started to significantly solve the existing problem and set Hamas back regarding its future smuggling potential, at least if the IDF withdrew only for a period of months.
This means that if some officials were willing to talk theoretically with Egypt and Qatar in May about how to set up technological surveillance of the Philadelphi Corridor, of which Israel would maintain control, many of these same officials were ready to execute the plan by July.
It is less clear what Netanyahu’s intentions are or were.
Sources have said that Netanyahu seems to have given them a mandate to show flexibility on the Philadelphi Corridor issue as long as negotiators preserved Israel’s right to resume attacking Hamas after Phase I.
Meaning, as long as Israel could theoretically resume attacking Hamas after getting 20-30 hostages over 40-60 days, Netanyahu implied to Israeli officials that using technology for defense on the Corridor instead of boots on the ground would be an option for a few months and maybe longer.
However, every time Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich (Religious Zionist Party) and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir (Otzma Yehudit) smelled that Netanyahu might agree to a ceasefire and preemptively attacked him for it, he seemed to quickly come out with a statement denying any flexibility on the Philadelphi Corridor, along with some other issues.
What is Netanyahu’s true position? That is a fascinating – and possibly unsolvable – question; he may have not decided yet.
Down to the wire, as of early July 2020, many of Netanyahu’s enemies and supporters were convinced that he would annex part of the West Bank.
Instead, he stunned the world by rolling out a secret series of normalization deals with Arab and Muslim countries in August 2020, known as the Abraham Accords.
There are plenty of examples in the other direction, such as when Netanyahu’s enemies and supporters expected him to make pro-diplomacy moves but, at the last second, he went in the opposite direction.
He may also have wanted to have used Israeli negotiators to float trial balloons to lure out Hamas to make concessions, such as allowing Israel to return to the attack after Phase I.
BY JULY, something may have changed.
All the officials became convinced that time was running out to save the hostages and that enough tunnels were destroyed to set Hamas back – at least for a temporary period of months, to allow Phase I of the ceasefire hostage deal to go through, and some started going public about their frustration with Netanyahu.
This led to a critical turning point: Netanyahu called the shots and could have fired or sidelined any of them, but he chose not to.
Once he did not even sideline any of them, despite their public support for concessions on the Philadelphi Corridor and other issues, it is possible that some defense officials felt freer to seek to close a deal, including putting forth offers to concede on the Philadelphi Corridor, even notwithstanding some of Netanyahu’s objections.
Waiting on Netanyahu's answer
According to some reports, Netanyahu would have fired Gallant if not for concern that it would harm his relations with the US at a critical moment, given that Biden administration officials trust Gallant far more than the prime minister.
What if some Israeli officials are helping close a potential hostage and ceasefire deal beyond some of Netanyahu’s limits, counting on the idea that CIA Director Bill Burns or Biden himself will later read the riot act to Netanyahu if he does not accept?
Until now, the US has blamed negotiation failures on Hamas, but what if they threaten to blame it on Netanyahu?Some of these wild scenarios could explain some of the whiplash that observers, who are trying to judge what “Israel’s” position is on the Philadelphi Corridor, may be experiencing – with the idea that there is no longer only one Israeli position.
Whether that will lead to a deal is anyone’s guess.