As Israeli troops push farther south in Gaza, officials in Jerusalem are signaling what could be a central, and politically perilous, aim of the war’s next phase: taking control of the border crossing with Egypt, The Washington Post reports.
Since December, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly asserted that Israel cannot eliminate Hamas without exercising authority over Gaza’s southern border region, including Egypt’s Rafah crossing, which has served as a vital transit point for people and humanitarian aid into the besieged enclave.
“The Philadelphi Corridor — or, to put it more correctly, the southern stoppage point [of Gaza] — must be in our hands. It must be shut,” Netanyahu said in late December, referring to a buffer road along the border. “It is clear that any other arrangement would not ensure the demilitarization that we seek.”
Before Oct. 7, Egyptian and Hamas border authorities each managed their respective sides of the Rafah crossing, which sits along the Philadelphi Corridor, a no man’s land approximately nine miles long and several hundred yards wide that stretches from the southernmost tip of Gaza to the Mediterranean Sea. Israel hasn’t had boots on the ground along the border since 2005, when the country withdrew its forces from the Gaza Strip.
