The Israeli security cabinet has backed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his demand – one of the main obstacles to agreeing a ceasefire with Hamas – that his army maintain troops when the war ends in the so-called Philadelphia Corridor. These are the 14 kilometers of Gaza bordering Egypt and which Netanyahu has turned into what Rafah was: the keyword suddenly turned into a condition sine qua non for Israel’s security, on which he will make no concessions. Netanyahu has been insisting for weeks that a multinational presence (and certainly not a UN presence) would not be enough, because Hamas obtained much of the weaponry it used in its October 7 attack there, via tunnels from the Sinai. There must be at least some Israeli soldiers to guard the border.
“After almost a year of neglect, Netanyahu does not miss a single opportunity to guarantee that there will be no deal. Not a day goes by without him taking concrete steps to jeopardize the return home of all hostages,” responded the Forum for Hostages and Missing Families, the main international organization. lobbyin favor of the negotiated return of the more than 100 hostages remaining in Gaza, at least a third of whom are dead.
The paradox is that the Israeli army itself does not consider it essential, if it prevents an agreement that would allow the return of the hostages and free up troops for whatever comes next in Lebanon or the West Bank. In fact, the Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, called on Thursday to “expand” the objectives of the war in Gaza to include that the tens of thousands of Israelis evacuated from the border area for 11 months (under daily fire from rockets, anti-tank shells and Hezbollah drones) can return to their homes “in safety.”
Gallant, as the messenger of the armed forces’ perspective, was the only one of the 10 ministers to vote against. He belongs to the same party as Netanyahu (the right-wing Likud), but their differences are no secret, even before the war. In March 2023, he was the first to claim that the social and political division generated by the judicial reform promoted by the prime minister endangered national security. Netanyahu announced his dismissal, but did not formalize it, so – when pressure came from the Joe Biden administration, which sees Gallant as a more serious and reliable interlocutor than Netanyahu – it was enough to keep him in office and announce it.
On Friday, at the executive meeting, their differences resulted in a shouting match, with Netanyahu banging the table after Gallant said that “he can make all the decisions and he can also decide to kill all the hostages,” according to Channel 12 television.
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In the end, eight ministers voted in favor. They were not convinced by the confidential document that Gallant showed them and which was reported on Thursday night by Channel 12. He wrote it in the last few days and states that Israel is at a “strategic crossroads.” One of the paths, according to Gallant’s analysis, begins with a ceasefire agreement that puts an end to almost 11 months of war in Gaza, which has left more than 40,000 Palestinians dead and regionalized the crisis like never before in half a century.
Beyond bringing back the hostages, the deal opens the door to a brokered agreement to calm the waters with Hezbollah, avoid open war and force Iran to temper its retaliation for the killing on its soil last month of Hamas leader Ismail Haniya. The other path, continuing the war, leads to a multi-front conflict and the recovery of the hostages already in coffins.
Only one minister abstained: Itamar Ben Gvir. The far-right head of National Security, who has just further inflamed the mood by advocating the construction of a synagogue on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem (one of the most sensitive and explosive sites in the Middle East conflict), considers a permanent presence on the border insufficient. He advocates “promoting voluntary emigration” of Gazans (a euphemism for ethnic cleansing), building Jewish settlements and re-stationing soldiers throughout Gaza to protect them. In other words, returning to the situation before 2005, when Ariel Sharon’s government unilaterally withdrew them and the Likud split in two: Sharon formed Kadima and Netanyahu took the reins of the Likud, opposed to leaving Gaza. Ben Gvir was then an activist against leaving Gaza, coming from Kaj, a movement so racist that it ended up being illegal in Israel.
Ben Gvir is also one of the ministers for whom the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, proposes sanctions for sending “unacceptable hate messages.” The other, although not explicit, is Bezalel Smotrich, Minister of Finance, who said last month that “it could be moral” to starve the more than two million Gazans, but the world prevents it. Borrell launched the technical process to sanction them, but the member countries – which, due to their different histories and diplomatic traditions, view the Middle East conflict differently – received the proposal coldly this Thursday in Brussels.
Last Sunday, the negotiating teams of Israel and Hamas ended their meeting in Cairo without any significant progress, after a previous meeting in Doha with a similar result. After Netanyahu introduced new demands to the agreement and Washington (one of the three mediators) accommodated them in a new draft, to the anger of Hamas, the dialogue is now focused on less thorny issues. The fate of Philadelphia and another corridor, Netzarim, which cuts Gaza in two halves, will be left for later.
As negotiations drag on, everyday life in Gaza remains atrocious. In the fourth attack on humanitarian organisations this week, an Israeli airstrike killed five Palestinian employees of the logistics company providing security for a convoy of the US NGO Anera carrying fuel and supplies for a hospital. The army says it bombed to prevent an attack on the convoy.
The day before, the World Food Programme halted operations after one of its vehicles – marked with the UN symbol and previously coordinated with the army – was hit by ten bullets. It was a “communication error” between military units, Israel informed Washington after an initial review, according to the US deputy envoy to the United Nations.
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