A senior IDF officer returned to Israel from Egypt after holding talks relating to the ongoing war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, during which Israel is said to have asked Cairo to agree to let Israel maintain control of a key Gaza-Egypt border road after the war, Channel 13 news reported Thursday.
Citing unnamed senior security figures, the network said that the discussions in Egypt dealt with increasing the amount of humanitarian aid that enters Gaza, as well as the future of the so-called Philadelphi Route, also known as the Philadelphi Corridor, which runs for 14 kilometers (8.7 miles) along the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip.
Last month, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that once the war in Gaza is over, Israel will retain security control in the Strip, including along the border with Egypt, to prevent weapons from being smuggled through tunnels into the coastal enclave.
Egyptian lawmaker Mustafa Bakri roundly criticized Netanyahu’s comments at the time, denouncing the idea that Israel would retain control of the Philadelphi Route as an attack on Egyptian sovereignty and a violation of the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt.
Netanyahu’s assertion “that the Philadelphi Route area on the Egyptian border should be under Israeli control, this is a blatant assault on the peace agreement between the two countries,” Bakri posted to X, formerly Twitter. “Don’t come close. The Egyptian border is a red line. It seems that you do not know the power of our army and the ability of our people.”
The Philadelphi Route is inside Gaza and not in Egypt.
After reports earlier this week that Jerusalem and Cairo were cooperating on the matter of the Philadelphi Route, an unnamed Egyptian government official told Egyptian media outlets on Monday that the reports were “categorically false.”
During a summit in the Jordanian city of Aqaba on Wednesday, Egypt’s President Abdel-Fatah el-Sissi, along with Jordan’s King Abdullah and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, warned against any Israeli reoccupation of the Gaza Strip after the war, although he didn’t make any direct reference to the Philadelphi Route.
A statement released by the three leaders at the end of the summit confirmed “a complete rejection of any attempt to reoccupy parts of Gaza, and the need to enable its people to return to their homes.”
Also on the agenda during the meetings between Israeli and Egyptian security officials in Cairo was the issue of the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza, Channel 13 reported.
Prior to the deadly onslaught carried out by Hamas in southern Israel on October 7, in which some 1,200 people were slaughtered amid scenes of horrific brutality and around 240 others were dragged into Gaza as hostages, around 500 trucks of goods would enter the Gaza Strip each day, much of it through Israeli crossings.
Following the Hamas assault, which was carried out across more than 20 communities close to the Gaza border, Israel cut off aid to the enclave completely but slowly began allowing trucks to enter the Strip via Egypt’s Rafah Crossing some two weeks into the war.
While Israel then committed to allowing the entry of 200 trucks into Gaza per day, Rafah Crossing struggled to keep up with the demand, and most days fewer than 100 trucks would successfully reach the Gaza Strip.
In December, Israel’s government voted to temporarily reopen the Kerem Shalom Crossing to facilitate the entry of increased aid, raising the amount of aid to around 100 trucks a day.
Calls to increase aid to Gaza have come from various countries and international bodies, including the United Nations, which called the volume of aid making it into Gaza “woefully inadequate.”
Israel in return has blamed the UN for the backlog, saying the organization has been failing to keep up with the amount of aid Israel is inspecting.
On Wednesday, the World Health Organization (WHO) called for Israel to allow humanitarian aid to reach all parts of the Gaza Strip, including northern Gaza, where thousands of Palestinians have largely been cut off from assistance.
In a video statement posted on X, formerly Twitter, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that aid deliveries earmarked for northern Gaza “face nearly insurmountable challenges.”
“We have the supplies, the teams, and the plans in place. What we don’t have is access,” he said, condemning the fact that the group had to cancel six aid missions to northern Gaza in recent weeks after Israel reportedly failed to give the group assurance of safe passage.
In the same statement, the WHO official called for Hamas to release the Israeli hostages and for all sides to protect health care, saying “it cannot be attacked and it cannot be militarized.”
It is believed that 132 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza — not all of them alive — after 105 civilians were released from Hamas captivity during a weeklong truce in late November.
Four hostages were released prior to that, and one was rescued by troops. The bodies of eight hostages have also been recovered and three hostages were mistakenly killed by the military.
The Israel Defense Forces has confirmed the deaths of 25 of those still held by Hamas, citing new intelligence and findings obtained by troops operating in Gaza.
Hamas is also holding the bodies of fallen IDF soldiers Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin since 2014, as well as two Israeli civilians, Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed, who are both thought to be alive after entering the Strip of their own accord in 2014 and 2015 respectively.
Despite renewed efforts to reach a deal for the release of the remaining hostages in recent weeks, Channel 13 quoted senior Israeli officials on Thursday as saying that there’s been no breakthrough on a new agreement to release them.
On Wednesday, the war cabinet reviewed a new Qatari proposal for a hostage release deal and ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, according to multiple reports. The offer was said to go beyond a temporary truce, providing a roadmap for ending the war that includes Hamas’s leaders going into exile and Israel withdrawing its troops from the Strip.
According to reports on channels 12 and 13, Ynet and other outlets, the “preliminary” proposal from Doha would see Israel allow Hamas leaders to leave Gaza in exchange for the gradual release of all of the remaining captives, as well as the Israel Defense Forces concluding its offensive.
While the Qatari proposal is still being debated, there has reportedly been no movement in negotiations with Egypt, which also serves as one of the main mediators between Israel and Hamas.