Could Hamas’s survival in the Gaza Strip hang in the end on the fate of a small 14-kilometer buffer zone running along the enclave’s border with Egypt, known as the Philadelphi Corridor?
On its surface, it looks like a small dusty road that runs alongside a concrete barrier, topped by a wire fence, stretching from the Israeli border at Kerem Shalom to the Mediterranean Sea.
It ends in a scenic spot by the sea, which, absent a parked tank and a shoreline of bombed-out homes, could almost be confused for an idyllic vacation spot.
Scores of illegal underground tunnels underneath it allowed smugglers to bring civilian goods, light arms, and sophisticated weapons into Gaza, earning it the nickname of Hamas’s “oxygen pipeline.”
“Once this infrastructure is shut down, they [Hamas] lose their oxygen pipe, and they lose their ability to supply themselves with critical materials,” said Kobi Michael. He is a strategic affairs expert and a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies.
The Gaza Strip itself is only 41 kilometers long and is sandwiched between Israel and Egypt. Israel has until recently maintained a military maritime and aerial blockade of Gaza so that land passages have been the only entry points for goods.
The weakest security point has been at the Rafah Crossing, between Egypt, as well as the 14-kilometer stretch alongside that border.
There are those who argue that Israel's pullout from Gaza in 2005, known as the Disengagement, failed simply because the IDF withdrew from the Philadelphi Corridor and or left without a good security plan.
“It was a mistake to withdraw without a complete and comprehensive solution,” said Shalom Ben-Hanan, who formerly held leadership positions in the Israel Security Agency at a rank equivalent to Major General.
The question of the Philadelphi Corridor and its role in the IDF’s campaign to defeat Hamas has returned to the headlines in the last weeks, as the IDF recaptured the strategic buffer zone after seizing control of the Rafah Crossing last month.
Bring in the media
The IDF brought reporters to the Philadelphi Corridor this week to underscore its vital role. Pundits worry, that unless Israel has a security plan in place to prevent smuggling, any IDF departure from the Philadelphi Corridor would inevitably allow Hamas to rearm and return to power in Gaza.
Before disengagement, the corridor was controlled by the IDF so they could better protect its side of the Egyptian border and prevent the smuggling of arms, weapons, explosives, and civilian merchandise from Sinai from countries such as Libya and Sudan, Ben-Hanan said.
When the IDF left in 2005, it handed the territory to the Palestinian Authority. Two years later, Hamas seized control of the enclave in a bloody coup and has held it since, gaining military prowess despite stiff Israeli restrictions on the flow of goods.
For a decade after the IDF withdrew in 2005, Ben-Hanan explained, Bedouins ran an unofficial smuggling industry grounded in the hundreds of tunnels they had dug under the corridor.
"Everything that you can imagine was smuggled through these tunnels” into the Gaza Strip, said Ben-Hanan, who is a fellow at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT) at Reichman University.
Around 2015 or 2016, Ben-Hanan said, Egypt began to crack down on the smuggling tunnels due to the strong connection between Hamas and ISIS in Sinai.
The Egyptian army on its side of the border “killed smugglers” and “arrested them,” destroyed hundreds of homes, and “even transferred” part of the population out of that territory, he said.
“They flooded and destroyed many tunnels,” he said.
Egypt’s actions reduced the problem but did not eliminate it, Ben-Hanan said, adding that dozens of tunnels had remained through which arms and funds were funneled to Hamas that allowed it to wage war against Israel, including through the launching of sophisticated rockets.
“If we will succeed in preventing the smuggling, which is essential for Hamas, it will be very difficult for them [Hamas] to build their power again,” Ben-Hanan said, as he underscored that the terror group had not been defeated.
To close the border hermetically, Israel must still control the corridor for a period of time, he said, until a solution is found to stop weapons smuggling.
“From a security point of view, a military point of view, we can not allow Hamas to go back to power in Gaza. This is for sure.”
“If Israel withdraws now or in three months it will affect us very badly, it will be a big problem. It will be another factor in the renewal of Hamas forces. We can withdraw from the Philadelphi corridor only when we can find and rebuild a solution that will prevent 100% of armed smuggling into the Gaza Strip,” he said.
FORMER NATIONAL Security Adviser Maj.-Gen. (res.) Yaakov Amidror said that one of the critical differences between the West Bank and Gaza has been the IDF’s ability to control the borders of the former territory.
“From history, we learned that the only way to deal with a terrorist organization is if you have the ability to separate them from the outside and not let them be provided by weapons systems,” Amidror said.
If this happens, “you have a chance to fight and to win, and if you don’t, the chances are very low or from the history lessons impossible,” he explained.
Israel’s challenge, he said, is how to balance that reality with the international legal reality of occupation.
The fact that Israel controls only two of Gaza’s borders and Egypt controls the third, Amidror said, means that the enclave can not be considered to be occupied under international law.
The IDF can control the border briefly now that it is at war with Hamas, but it cannot retain that complete control once that war is over, said Amidror.
“According to the international law, if a state is controlling all the passages and the borders of the area, it is practically the occupier of the area and has many obligations to provide the population with food and water” and civilian services such as health and education, he said.
This is not the same as the humanitarian aid Israel has provided amid battle, Amidror explained.
“If after battle we will be on all the borders around Gaza,” then the enclave will be our responsibility, he said.
From a purely military point of view, the corridor should be controlled by the IDF, he said.
Once the war is over, “we will have to find an arrangement by which we are not controlling the corridor by the same time the Palestinians can not dig tunnels under it,” he said.