According to multiple top sources, a number of times in the last three months, Israel has purportedly hinted or explicitly told Hamas, the US, Qatar, and Egypt that it would be willing to withdraw from the all-important Philadelphi Corridor in Rafah in Gaza in order 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. hostage recovery coordinator Nitzan Alon, at least as of July, had all 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 have told the 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: one was to prevent Hamas from any future capability to rearm itself via cross-border smuggling from Egypt, but an even more immediate reason was to have enough time to destroy the existing smuggling tunnels.
When the Post visited Rafah and the Philadelphi Corridor in late June and viewed shafts connected to cross-border tunnels, it was clear 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 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 having destroyed 50 parts of tunnels after some 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 back Hamas regarding the future potential of smuggling, at least if the IDF only withdrew for a period of months.
This progress means that if, in May, some top Israeli defense officials were willing to talk theoretically with Egypt and Qatar about how to set up technological surveillance of the Philadelphi Corridor, which Israel would maintain control of, by July, many of these same officials were ready to execute the plan.
It is less clear what Netanyahu’s intentions are or have been.
Sources have told the Post that, at times, Netanyahu has seemed to have given them the mandate to show flexibility on the Philadelphia Corridor issue as long as negotiators preserved the right of Israel to start attacking Hamas again after Phase I.
Put differently, as long as Israel could theoretically start attacking Hamas again 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.
But anytime Betzalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir smelled that Netanyahu might agree to a ceasefire and preemptively attacked him for it, he seemed to quickly issue a statement denying any flexibility on the Philadelphi Corridor issue, along with some other issues.
What Netanyahu’s true position is a fascinating and possibly irresolvable question.
He may not have decided yet.
Down to the wire, as of early July 2020, many of Netanyahu’s enemies and supporters were convinced that he was going to 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, where Netanyahu’s enemies and supporters expected him to make pro-diplomacy moves, and 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.
But as of July, something may have changed.
All of the above-named defense officials became convinced that time was running out to save the hostages, that enough tunnels had been 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 to go public with their frustration with Netanyahu.
This led to a critical turning point. Netanyahu calls the shots and could have fired or sidelined any of them but 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 conceding on the Philadelphi Corridor, even in spite of some of Netanyahu’s objections.
Some reports have said that 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; what if they threaten to blame it on Netanyahu?
Some of these wild scenarios could explain some of the whiplash that observers may be experiencing who are trying to judge what “Israel’s” position is on the Philadelphi Corridor with the idea that there is no longer only one Israeli position.
Whether that will lead to a deal once there is a five-dimensional game of chess also with the US, Egypt, Qatar, and Hamas (meaning, at this point, Yahya Sinwar is in a hole somewhere in Gaza) is anyone’s guess.
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