Ministers vote to back PM’s stance in favor of IDF staying in Philadelphi Corridor

The security cabinet voted overwhelmingly last night to back Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s position in favor of maintaining Israeli troops in the Philadelphi Corridor as part of the ceasefire and hostage release deal still being negotiated, a senior official in the premier’s office says.

The top panel of ministers was asked to approve a series of maps that the IDF has drawn up showing how Israel plans to maintain its troop presence in the nine-mile narrow stretch along the Egypt-Gaza border. These maps have already been adopted by the US, the official says, apparently referencing the bridging proposal submitted earlier this month by the Biden administration.

Netanyahu turned the continued IDF deployment in the Philadelphi Corridor into a new demand in the hostage negotiations last month, insisting that it was essential for preventing continued weapons smuggling, which would allow for the revival of Hamas after the war.

In last night’s security cabinet meeting, eight ministers voted in favor of Netanyahu’s position regarding the Philadelphi Corridor, while only Defense Minister Yoav Gallant voted against it, reflecting the security establishment’s push for more flexibility on the issue, fearing Netanyahu’s stance will further drag out the talks, risking the lives of the hostages.

Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir cast the vote’s lone abstention, ostensibly arguing that Netanyahu’s stance wasn’t hawkish enough.

During the meeting, Netanyahu told ministers that Hamas had been able to carry out its October 7 onslaught because Israel didn’t have control over the Philadelphi Corridor, the senior Israeli official says in a statement to reporters.

Netanyahu stressed that by maintaining control over the corridor, Israel will prevent another attack of that nature from unfolding since Hamas won’t be able to re-arm itself.

He also argued that this stance will actually make a hostage deal more likely because Hamas will see that it has no other choice but to compromise on this issue, just as it did when it agreed to forgo its demand for a permanent end to the war.

During last night’s security cabinet meeting, Netanyahu went after the defense establishment, claiming they had wrongly supported Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 and the Oslo Accords of the 1990s.

“Security officials claimed that they would know how to deal with the first rocket (from Gaza), but this did not happen after Hamas began raining fire on Israel,” Netanyahu told the ministers, according to the statement from an official in his office. Hamas had been launching rockets at Israel before the Disengagement.

“Security officials also believed that they would know how to deal with the withdrawal from Lebanon and before that with the import of terrorist elements into Judea and Samaria (West Bank) as part of the Oslo Accords. These estimates were also wrong,” Netanyahu told the ministers.

Separately during last night’s meeting, the security cabinet was presented with the preliminary results of an IDF review that found that most of the no-longer-alive hostages were killed during the first six months of the war, closer to the October 7 onslaught and not in recent months, the Israeli official says.

The publication of the revelation comes amid uproar from hostage families that more of their loved ones could have been brought back alive had the negotiations not dragged on for as long as they have. Earlier this month, six hostages — who had been alive until earlier this year — were returned to Israel in body bags.