Israel presses Egypt to secure border against Hamas smugglers

Israel says Philadelphi Corridor has been used by Hamas to smuggle weapons and people through underground tunnels.

Gaza’s border with Egypt as seen from Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Picture: Reuters

Israel and Egypt are negotiating the future of a corridor between Egypt and Gaza that Israel says has been used by Hamas to smuggle weapons and people through underground tunnels and is key to destroying the militant group.

Israel has requested that sensors be installed along the Philadelphi Corridor — the sliver of land controlled by Egypt that borders Gaza — according to senior Egyptian officials, to alert Israel in case Hamas attempts to rebuild a tunnel and smuggling network after the war. Israel, which used to control the corridor, also requested direct notifications if the sensors are triggered and the right to send surveillance drones into the area in case of such a trigger, the officials said.

In response, Egypt said that it would consider adding the sensors but that a direct notification or approval of drones would be a violation of Egyptian sovereignty, the officials said. The negotiations, which have taken shape over the past two weeks, are currently stuck on this issue, the officials said.

The Israeli government didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The negotiations between Egypt and Israel came as Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited the region to prevent the conflict from spreading, increase humanitarian aid to Gaza and plan for governance of the territory after the war.

On Sunday, Blinken met with Jordanian King Abdullah II. During the meeting, Blinken “stressed U.S. opposition to forcible displacement of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza and the critical need to protect Palestinian civilians in the West Bank from extremist settler violence,” said State Department spokesman Matthew Miller. The comments come after some far-right members of the Israeli government advocated for displacing Palestinians and building Israeli settlements in Gaza.

On Monday, Blinken is set to meet leaders in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia before flying to Israel.

As Israel has set out to destroy Hamas, the frontier between Egypt and Gaza has come under focus. Israel has curtailed the delivery of aid through the border as part of a drive to ensure Hamas doesn’t misdirect it for military uses. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the Philadelphi Corridor must be ” in our hands,” in a December 30 news conference and that control of the border between Gaza and Egypt is key to ensuring the demilitarisation of Gaza.

“It must be closed,” he said. “It’s clear that any other arrangement won’t guarantee the disarmament that we want.”

The corridor is a roughly 14km-long buffer running the length of the Gaza frontier with Egypt. The security buffer was initially established by the 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel and was controlled by Israel to prevent the movement of weapons and goods between Egypt and Gaza. But Israel relinquished that control to Egypt and Palestinian authorities after Israel unilaterally pulled out from Gaza in 2005.

Since Hamas took over the enclave in 2007, Israel alleges the corridor has become the militant group’s main avenue for smuggling weapons and illicit goods into the Gaza Strip.

“It’s clear that the Egyptians failed to stop the flow of munitions and weapons into Gaza in the past 18 years; they can’t deny it,” said Giora Eiland, a retired Israeli general.

The negotiations with Egypt come as Israel focuses its war against Hamas on the southern part of the enclave.

The Israeli military said on Saturday that it has managed to destroy Hamas’s military structure in northern Gaza, although it still doesn’t have full military control over the area. Israel has killed key leadership and severed command lines, rendering the 12 Hamas battalions in northern Gaza unable to fight in an organised manner, said Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military’s chief spokesman. Israel has also destroyed several miles of subterranean tunnel and military infrastructure in northern Gaza, he said.

Hamas didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Violence continued to flare in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where an Israeli citizen was killed by gunmen, according to the Israeli police. It came after a violent night in the West Bank city of Jenin, where Islamic Jihad — a militant group that, like Hamas, has been designated a terrorist organisation by the US — took responsibility for an explosion that hit an Israeli border police vehicle, killing one officer. The Israeli military also said it conducted a strike on militants who fired on troops. Eight Palestinians were killed, Palestinian health officials said.

On Sunday, two Palestinian journalists were killed in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run media office and the Committee to Protect Journalists. As of Jan. 2, some 77 journalists and media workers had been killed since the beginning of the war, according to CPJ.

“The continuous killings of journalists and their family members by Israeli army fire must end,” said CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator Sherif Mansour.

Israel has been under pressure from the US and other allies to transition to lower-intensity fighting, which analysts say might happen in phases across the Strip, likely starting with northern Gaza, where Israel has made the most progress and is already withdrawing forces.

High-intensity battles are expected, however, to continue in central and southern Gaza, which represent newer and more complicated fronts, the Israeli military said, as the area is full of civilians who have fled from the north to the south.

Some 1.9 million Gazans have been displaced since the war began, according to the UN, representing 90 per cent of the strip’s population. More than 22,000 people, mostly women and children, have been killed since Israel launched a war in Gaza aimed at toppling Hamas from power, according to Palestinian health officials. The number doesn’t distinguish between combatants and civilians.

Gazans who are being asked to evacuate their homes by Israeli forces are struggling to find a place to go. Fatima Khalaf, 35, said she had no room to host her sister, who was forced to evacuate her home in Nuseirat, in central Gaza. “I could not help her,” she said. Khalaf, who is farther south in Deir al-Balah, said she worries she too could face evacuation orders and won’t have anywhere to go.

“You need to sign up and wait for a week until you get a tent,” she said. “The humanitarian situation is rapidly deteriorating.”

In a meeting with Qatar’s prime minister and foreign minister in Doha, Mr Blinken said he plans to speak to Israel about doing more to prevent civilian harm, including increasing aid.

“An immediate increase in aid is essential, as is improving deconfliction procedures to ensure its safe and secure delivery, including to northern Gaza,” Blinken said.

Abeer Ayyoud, Fatima AbdulKarim and Will Mauldin contributed to this article

The Wall Street Journal