Top Netanyahu aide doesn’t rule out pullout from Gaza-Egypt border in deal’s 2nd phase
Strategic Affairs Minister Dermer says IDF must stay at Philadelphi Corridor until ‘practical solution’ found; Cairo says staying there as PM advocated would violate peace treaty
Lazar Berman is The Times of Israel's diplomatic reporter
Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer stressed on Wednesday that while Israel is not going to withdraw from the Philadelphi Corridor in the first phase of any ceasefire-hostage deal with Hamas, it would be prepared to leave the door open for a full withdrawal in a negotiated second phase down the line.
“In phase one, Israel is going to stay on that line until we have a practical solution on the ground that can convince the people of Israel… that what happened on October 7 will not happen again, that Hamas will not rearm,” Dermer told the Bloomberg TV network.
On Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made the case for a permanent Israeli presence on the Gaza-Egypt border, arguing that it was a necessary step to ensure Hamas cannot rearm and rebuild its control after its war with Israel ends.
However, Dermer, his close adviser, indicated that this demand may not be set in stone and that there could be alternative arrangements in the context of a long-term ceasefire.
“Phase one of this deal, what it calls for… is to have negotiations over the conditions over a permanent ceasefire,” said Dermer. “And once you’ve concluded those negotiations, while you’re in a ceasefire for phase one, in order to get to phase two and a permanent ceasefire, that’s when you can discuss long-term security arrangements on the Philadelphi Corridor.”
Dermer was asked repeatedly about reports Wednesday, including by The Times of Israel, that Netanyahu had dispatched Mossad chief David Barnea to Doha to inform Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani that the IDF is prepared to fully withdraw from the Philadelphi Corridor in the second phase of the deal.
Dermer called the report “misleading” but did not elaborate further.
The step came hours before the press conference in which Netanyahu had indicated that the IDF would remain along the border route indefinitely.
While the premier also technically left the door open for a phase-two withdrawal from Philadelphi, the rest of his speech focused on why Israel has an existential need to remain there — one that, based on the way he presented it, wouldn’t likely dissipate in just six weeks when the phase is supposed to end.
He made it very clear that he didn’t think a viable alternative would be established to replace Israel in securing the border in the foreseeable future and stressed that the IDF would need to remain there indefinitely — a timeframe that doesn’t jive with the deal’s envisioning of a full Israeli withdrawal after just six weeks.
“I can’t talk about the arrangements in a second phase because we haven’t even negotiated about who is going to be there, how long is it going to take?” said Dermer on Wednesday.
At the same time, he stressed that “until we have an actual, practical solution on the ground for the Philadelphi Corridor, Israeli forces cannot leave.”
Furthermore, he said, Israel would not be making any concessions to Hamas following the terror group’s execution of six hostages last week, days before IDF troops came upon them.
“If Hamas doesn’t pay a heavy price for killing the six hostages, they’re going to start killing hostages, thinking that if you kill hostages you get concessions,” said Dermer, after Defense Minister Yoav Gallant reportedly urged Netanyahu to change his stance on the Philadelphi Corridor after the murders, arguing that he was failing to prioritize the lives of the hostages who could still be saved.
Of the 251 hostages abducted to Gaza on October 7, 97 are believed to remain in captivity, including the bodies of at least 33 confirmed dead by the IDF. The bodies of 37 other hostages have been recovered.
Dermer continued along the line Netanyahu took earlier this week, directly criticizing Egypt for its purported failure to prevent Hamas from smuggling in weapons from the Sinai Peninsula. Unlike Netanyahu, however, Dermer mentioned Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi by name.
He said that he was “not questioning the intentions of the Egyptians” but rather was “questioning the results.”
Nine years ago, Egypt razed thousands of homes on its side of the border to create a buffer zone with Gaza. Since then, it has said that smuggling is no longer an issue, rejecting Netanyahu’s accusations that Hamas smuggles in its weapons via the shared border.
The accusations against Egypt have angered its regional allies, including in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
The UAE’s foreign ministry put out a statement in which it expressed “its full solidarity with the Arab Republic of Egypt in the face of Israeli allegations and claims regarding the Philadelphi Corridor, and strongly condemns and denounces the offensive Israeli statements in this regard, which threaten stability and exacerbate the situation in the region.”
It called on Israel to “stop the escalation and not take steps that exacerbate tension and instability in the region, stressing the UAE’s rejection of all practices that violate international legitimacy resolutions and threaten further escalation.”
Saudi Arabia similarly said it “strongly condemns and denounces” Israel’s comments on the corridor, and accused it of making “futile attempts to justify continued violations of international laws and norms.”
Egypt has remained vehemently opposed to Israel establishing any form of control over its border route, and on Tuesday protested that by defining the Philadelphi Corridor as a military zone, it would be violating the countries’ 1978 peace accord.
According to the Qatari-owned Al-Araby Al-Jadeed news outlet, Netanyahu had told Cairo ahead of his Monday press conference that he was willing to discuss the future of the Gaza-Egypt border in negotiations on the second phase of a deal. He was told, however, that Cairo would accept nothing less than a pledge to withdraw, even if didn’t happen in the first phase of the deal.
Turning his attention from Egypt to the other regional mediator in the hostage-ceasefire negotiations, Dermer panned Qatar for “harboring and financing Hamas for a long time and frankly financing the Muslim Brotherhood all over the world, and also promoting a lot of Hamas propaganda which is antisemitic and anti-American through their state-controlled television station al-Jazeera.”
The minister said that despite recent criticism from US President Joe Biden, the two countries have remained closely coordinating on hostage talks: “We’re trying to get as much as we can on the same page as the Americans. I think we’ve been there for the last couple of months.”
“When the US and Israel show no daylight between them and when all the pressure is directed where it should be, on Hamas, I think the chances of getting to a deal go way, way up,” he said. “I hope we can get there in the next couple of weeks.”
In a possible contradiction of Dermer’s assessment, however, the White House declared on Tuesday that its latest proposal for a deal includes an IDF withdrawal from the Philadelphi Corridor, while US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters that the US has “made very clear what we believe about the possibility of an ongoing Israeli presence in Gaza — that we [are] opposed to it.”
