The History of Hamas’s Lifeline: Twenty Years of Broken Egyptian Pledges along Philadelphi Corridor

August 14, 2024

by: Lior Ben Ari ~ Ynetnews

Wednesday, 14 August 2024 | Nearly 20 years ago, a conversation took place between Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz that outlined a plan for deploying 750 Egyptian police officers along the Philadelphi Corridor within months to prevent arms smuggling.

The plan also included coordination between Egyptian and Israeli battalion and brigade commanders to thwart smuggling activities. However, this discussion did not occur recently or during the current war in Gaza but rather in March 2005, as part of the preparations for Israel’s disengagement plan, which was implemented later that summer.

During the talks, Mubarak made it clear to Mofaz that he expected Israel to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, including the Philadelphi Corridor, and that Egypt would handle security issues in the area. After the conversation, Mofaz noted that the Egyptian activity would also address intelligence against smugglers, their arrests and operations within Sinai, not just at the border. Even then, Egypt refused any Israeli presence along the narrow strip of land stretching the border.

The story of the Philadelphi Corridor spans over four decades of smuggling, broken promises, accusations and indirectly, numerous casualties. This has long been a problem for Israel, as the transfer of weapons, terrorists, infiltrators and goods beneath the border between Gaza and Egypt was a known and frustrating issue long before Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in 2007 and even before the disengagement in 2005.

However, only during the massacre of October 7 and the subsequent war did the extent of its impact on building a terrorist army in the Gaza Strip become evident.

When air strikes were believed sufficient against tunnels

The Philadelphi Corridor is a buffer zone between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, stretching 8.7 miles [14 km.] from the Mediterranean Sea in the west to Kerem Shalom in the east. The Rafah crossing, which splits the city between its Gazan and Egyptian parts, is considered a central point. The route was established in 1982, following the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, the evacuation of Sinai and the establishment of the new border in southern Gaza.

Even after the Oslo Accords in 1993, Israel continued to control the route until the disengagement, when a change to the military annex of the peace treaty with Egypt was approved. Dubbed the “Philadelphi Accord,” this agreement allowed Egypt to deploy 750 armed border guards along the route (the peace treaty had previously limited Egypt’s forces there). Egypt was supposed to prevent the smuggling of weapons into the Palestinian Authority territory, a promise that proved largely ineffective over the years.

Only a year after the disengagement, in October 2006, the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] recognized that the tunnels in southern Gaza had become a serious and central threat. “Terrorist organizations use them to smuggle weapons, thereby arming themselves with sophisticated arms like anti-tank missiles similar to those held by Hezbollah,” said a military source at the time.

Reports in the media indicated that Israel was investing “efforts” in uncovering smuggling tunnels along the Philadelphi Corridor and was considering bombing them from the air. Egypt expressed concern about such actions, which could threaten some 20,000 Gazans living near the border. “There are schools, banks and residential buildings that would be at risk if Israel used bombs against the tunnels,” an Egyptian source said at the time.

In retrospect, it’s hard to ignore the similarities—and perhaps the naivety—in the discussions around the issue. The first defense minister of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s government, Amir Peretz, said that the IDF did not intend to reoccupy the Gaza Strip but would act to neutralize the tunnel threat.

“If terrorist elements have managed to smuggle dozens of anti-tank missiles these days, we do not intend to wait until they bring in hundreds and thousands,” he noted, adding, “We will not turn a blind eye until the smuggling routes in the tunnels become highways.”

The IDF chief of staff at the time (and during the disengagement), Dan Halutz, remarked, “It’s better for the IDF to be on the corridor than not, but no decision has been made on the matter.”

Other ministers in the government called for “a return to the Philadelphi Corridor.”

The link to ISIS Sinai

The Philadelphi Corridor, which cuts through the city of Rafah, has a long history of human, familial, commercial and other ties severed when Israel withdrew from Sinai in the early 1980s. Beyond terror and weaponry, the tunnels dug beneath the new border also serve significant civilian purposes.

Ophir Winter, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, is well-versed in the history of smuggling under the Philadelphi Route, which has expanded over the years. According to Winter, this smuggling began shortly after Israel’s withdrawal from Sinai, about two decades before the 2005 disengagement.

“The tension between Israel and Egypt on the matter intensified after the disengagement in 2005, when the IDF left the corridor and escalated with Hamas’s takeover of Gaza in 2007,” he explained. “While both countries were opposed to Hamas and its imposed rule in Gaza, their priorities differed.”

Winter noted that during Mubarak’s presidency, arms smuggling was seen as more of an Israeli problem than an Egyptian one, leading to a lack of prioritization and resources to combat it. The issue worsened during the Arab Spring.

“During that time, anarchy in Egypt was exploited to smuggle weapons from Libya to Gaza,” Winter said. “Egypt’s attitude toward smuggling changed only after Mohamed Morsi’s presidency ended and Abdel Fattah el-Sisi rose to power, as Gaza became a logistical rear base for ISIS terrorism in Sinai, causing thousands of casualties and posing a major threat to Egypt’s national security.”

How did Sisi’s regime view Hamas’s smuggling operation? “The movement was perceived as hostile in Cairo, as it was considered an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood and was involved in subversive activities in Egypt. Therefore, in the mid-2010s, increasing efforts were made to combat smuggling, including flooding tunnels and creating a buffer zone on the Egyptian side of the border. Some of these measures were quietly coordinated with Israel. However, in 2017, certain understandings were reached between Egypt and Hamas, leading to a gradual reduction of terrorism in Sinai.”

For months, the Egyptians have said that any Israeli approach to the corridor would be seen as a violation of the peace treaty, but even after the IDF took control of the Rafah crossing in less than a day in early May, Cairo maintained that the peace treaty remained stable. This stance did not change even when the IDF announced in June that it had achieved full operational control along the corridor and had identified 35 tunnels, some crossing into Egypt.

An Israeli military source told the Washington Post in June that an estimated 20 tunnels in the area remain undetected. The source emphasized that before any IDF operation, contact is made with Egypt to coordinate activities. Just a few days ago, the IDF released footage of a 10-foot-high [3-m.-high] tunnel capable of accommodating large vehicles, which was discovered last week along the route.

Despite this, Egyptian officials continue to deny the existence of such tunnels. An Egyptian source recently denied “Israeli media reports about tunnels between Egypt and Gaza,” describing them as “an Israeli attempt to escape the failure in Gaza.” The source added, “Israel’s failure to make progress in Gaza leads it to publish claims about the existence of tunnels to justify the continued attacks in the Strip.”

Posted on August 14, 2024

Source: (This article was originally published by Ynetnews on August 14, 2024. Time-related language has been modified to reflect our republication today. See original article at this link.)

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