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Claim Israel ‘Can Always Return’ to Philadelphi Corridor Baseless
Some rises after an Israeli strike as Israeli forces launch a ground and air operation in the eastern part of Rafah, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, May 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Hatem Khaled
JNS.org – In recent days it has emerged that the Israel Defense Forces has to date uncovered and blocked off 150 smuggling tunnels under the Philadelphi Corridor sector of Rafah in the Gaza Strip, and the question of who will control this critical area has become a central sticking point during hostage negotiations with Hamas in Cairo.
The scope of the uncovered tunnel network marks a significant counter-terrorism success, yet simultaneously illustrates why Israel should be cautious about withdrawing from this strategic corridor, observers in Israel have told JNS.
According to Brig. Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser, former head of the Research and Assessment Division of Israel’s Military Intelligence and a senior research fellow at Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy, if Israel were to withdraw, there would be a resurgence of arms smuggling from Egypt into Gaza.
“The reality of so many tunnels under the corridor makes it clear that what will happen is a renewal of the smuggling of arms from Egypt to Gaza,” stated Kuperwasser, who is also a senior research fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Foreign Affairs. “Why does Hamas so insist on this corridor, if nothing is supposed to happen?”
Kuperwasser also pointed out that relying on Egypt to prevent these smuggling activities has proven to be an unrealistic hope.
“It’s obvious that Israel can’t rely on the Egyptians. They promised and supposedly acted to prevent these smuggling activities, but in practice, you see the vast amounts of weapons Hamas has. Why should this change?”
Kuperwasser argued that the Egyptian interest remains the same—to avoid being perceived as fighting “Palestinian resistance.”
“They can’t afford to genuinely combat this smuggling,” he said. He further noted that as long as Palestinian smuggling activities continue, Israel remains dependent on Egypt, and this dependency can be exploited by Cairo.
“As long as the Palestinians attack Israel, Israel needs the Egyptians more,” he observed. “There is also apparently the aspect of sorts of people who made money from this activity,” Kuperwasser added. “A lot of money is involved.”
Kuperwasser also warned against the notion that foreign or Palestinian forces could effectively prevent future smuggling operations.
“We have already tried all these tricks; they never worked,” he stated, emphasizing that the flow of weapons into Gaza would resume if Israel withdraws from the Philadelphi Corridor. “There will be no clause in a future agreement in which Hamas commits itself not to smuggle weapons from Egypt. We, on the other hand, will be prevented from entering as an explicit clause in the agreement,” he added.
Kuperwasser stressed that an Israeli return to the corridor after a withdrawal would be nearly impossible due to political pressures.
“There will always be political conditions that will prevent us from returning. Israel may want to return, but won’t be able to. There will be American pressure. The Egyptians will say absolutely not. The Iranians will threaten to attack if we do,” he said.
As a result, Kuperwasser said, the Israeli military presence along the Philadelphi Corridor is essential to ensure that Hamas and other terror organizations in Gaza are not able to rebuild their massive terror infrastructure in Gaza.
He emphasized the need for Israel to establish an underground counter-tunnel barrier similar to the one built along the Israel-Gaza border and to maintain a military presence in the area to ensure its effectiveness.
Professor Kobi Michael, a senior researcher at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies and the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy, highlighted that control over the corridor is synonymous with control over the Rafah Border Crossing between Gaza and Egypt.
“The Rafah Crossing has served as the main platform for smuggling weapons into Gaza, all with Egypt turning a blind eye,” he stated.
Abandoning the corridor and crossing before establishing monitoring and control mechanisms transparent to Israel means losing control over the corridor and crossing in the future,” he warned.
This control could be established, Michael argued, by creating a military presence at Rafah Crossing, or through building a meticulous sensor and surveillance system that is accessible to Israel and enables it operational freedom of movement.
Michael, too, dismissed as baseless the notion, often repeated by Israeli defense officials, that Israel could easily return to the corridor if needed. Drawing on past experiences after Israel’s disengagement from Gaza in 2005, he said, “We couldn’t do it after the disengagement from Gaza in 2005, and we won’t be able to do it—or at least, it will be very difficult—after withdrawing from there,” he noted.
“Israel would face extensive international and American pressure, as well as Egyptian pressure, including threats to cancel the peace agreement.”
Michael emphasized the need for Israel to reach an understanding with the United States and Egypt regarding direct Israeli control over the Philadelphi Corridor and Rafah Crossing until a barrier similar to the one along the Gaza border is completed, and until the Rafah Crossing is operated by a Palestinian element that is “not Hamas” and is under “international supervision that is fully transparent to Israel.”
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Palestinian Authority Restructures ‘Pay-for-Slay’ System, but Questions Remain About Whether Move Is Genuine
PA President Mahmoud Abbas at the UN General Assembly in New York. Photo: Reuters/Caitlin Ochs
The Palestinian Authority has restructured its so-called “pay-for-slay” program, which rewards terrorists and their families for carrying out attacks against Israelis, in an effort to push the United States to repeal punitive legislation against the PA for its long-standing policy.
The Palestinian Authority Martyr’s Fund makes official payments to Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, the families of “martyrs” killed in attacks on Israelis, and injured Palestinian terrorists. Reports estimate that approximately 8 percent of the PA’s budget is allocated to paying stipends to convicted terrorists and their families.
On Monday, however, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas issued a decree revoking the “laws and regulations related to the system of paying financial allowances to the families of prisoners, martyrs, and the wounded,” according to the official PA news agency WAFA.
“All families that benefited from previous laws, legislation, and regulations are subject to the same standards applied without discrimination to all families benefiting from protection and social welfare programs,” WAFA reported.
The decree means that the PA has changed its system such that payments to Palestinian prisoners convicted of terrorist attacks and their families will be based on their social economic status, not the acts they committed. Under the now-revoked program, Palestinians would receive more money for more severe terrorist acts — a policy that, according to critics, incentivized more terrorism.
However, Israeli journalist Lahav Harkov argued that the PA is “just restructuring the mechanism through which they pay terrorists so that they can claim it’s not them, it’s an ‘independent’ foundation doing it. An ‘independent’ foundation funded by the PA and whose board is appointed by PA President Mahmoud Abbas.”
The Israeli Foreign Ministry issued a statement on Monday saying, “This is a new fraudulent trick by the Palestinian Authority, which intends to continue making payments to terrorists and their families through other payment channels.”
Palestinian officials told Axios they hope Abbas’s decision will improve relations with the Trump administration and with the US Congress in order for Washington to resume US financial aid to the PA.
Along with its policy change, the PA reportedly asked the US to repeal the Taylor Force Act, a 2018 law which prohibits US funding to the PA so long as it maintains its pay-for-slay program.
Critics therefore doubt the sincerity of the move. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a think tank, noted that the PA has deceptively used “pay-for-slay” reform as a beginning chip in the past.
“The PA president … promised ‘pay-to-slay’ reform in 2020 to try to convince then incoming President Joe Biden to revoke 1987 legislation designating the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) ‘and its affiliates’ as terror groups,” FDD wrote.
Aaron Goren, a research analyst and editor at FDD, wrote in response to Monday’s news that “pay-to-slay reform is certainly welcome at face value and demonstrative of the Trump administration’s power in negotiations. However, American officials should be wary of the PA’s steadfast tactic of leveraging pay-to-slay reform to get concessions from the United States and Israel. The PA is likely to make serious demands from both nations in exchange.”
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Super Bowl Halftime Show Dancer Gets NFL Lifetime Ban for Displaying Palestinian Flag During Performance
A protester holding a flag with the words “Gaza” and “Sudan” as rapper Kendrick Lamar performed during the Super Bowl halftime show at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans on Feb. 9, 2025. Photo: Screenshot
A dancer in Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl LIX Halftime Show has been banned for life from all National Football League stadiums and events for waving a combined Palestinian-Sudanese flag with the words “Gaza” and “Sudan” during the rapper’s performance on Sunday night at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans.
The NFL said the African American protester, who has not been identified, concealed the flag and unveiled it without prior knowledge by the show’s production team.
“We commend security for quickly detaining the individual who displayed the flag,” the NFL said in a released statement. “He was a part of the 400-member field cast. The individual hid the item on his person and unveiled it late in the show. No one involved with the production was aware of the individual’s intent.” The league added that the individual “will banned for life from all NFL stadiums and events.”
Toward the end of Lamar’s performance — after his track “Not Like Us” and right before his final song “TV Off” — the dancer waved the flag while standing on top of a car used as a prop in the performance. The car, a Buick Grand National GNX, inspired the name of Lamar’s latest album, “GNX,” and it was a key prop in the rapper’s halftime show performance.
“Sudan” and “Gaza” were written on the white sections of the flag held by the protester. A heart was drawn next to “Sudan” and a solidarity fist was depicted next to the word “Gaza.” The dancer, who wore a black ensemble matching the other dancers on stage, also jumped off the car and fled the stage while still displaying the flag. He waved it while standing on the ground near other dancers before security personnel tackled and detained him. He was then removed from the field and escorted from the stadium. New Orleans police told USA Today that as of Monday, the performer has not been formally arrested or charged.
The incident took place a day after three more Israeli hostages were freed from Hamas captivity in Gaza, as part of a ceasefire agreement in the war between the terrorist organization and Israel, and while a civil war rages on in Sudan.
The New Orleans Police Department said it “continues to work with NFL and the halftime production team to ascertain any affiliation the individual may have had with the halftime show.”
The entertainment company behind the halftime show, Roc Nation, said in a statement that “the act by the individual was neither planned nor part of the production and was never in any rehearsal.”
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CAIR Accuses Israel of Moving ‘Genocide’ Into West Bank
CAIR officials give press conference on the Israel-Hamas war. Photo: Kyle Mazza / SOPA Images/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an organization that purports to advocate for Muslim Americans, has accused Israel of “moving the genocide from Gaza to the occupied West Bank,” lambasting the Jewish state for committing a litany of alleged human rights abuses in recent days.
In a Monday statement, CAIR accused Israel of displacing thousands of Palestinian civilians, destroying Palestinian neighborhoods, murdering a pregnant woman and her baby, and unjustly raiding a Palestinian bookstore.
“The radical Israeli government is clearly trying to move its genocidal campaign of slaughter and destruction from Gaza to the West Bank, where Israeli occupation forces are driving thousands of Palestinians from their homes, destroying entire neighborhoods, kidnapping hundreds, and randomly shooting others, including an eight-months pregnant woman and her baby,” CAIR said in its statement. “Indicted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu is a sociopath leading an army of war criminals, and our government must stop spending American taxpayer dollars on his latest campaign of murder, ethnic cleansing and destruction in the West Bank.”
In the 16 months following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s cross-border invasion of and massacre across southern Israel from Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023, the Jewish state has ramped up operations to uproot terrorists in the West Bank.
These efforts intensified last month, when Israel launched a counterterrorism effort in the West Bank coined “Operation Iron Wall”” Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops, gunships, and drones operated in Jenin to extract Palestinian terrorists from the town and its adjacent refugee camps. Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that the operation was greenlit “on the directive of the security cabinet” with the aim of “bolstering security in Judea and Samaria [Israel’s preferred terminoloy for the West Bank].”
Jenin Mayor Mohammad Jarrar claimed that 150 buildings had been destroyed in the town as a result of the operation, suggesting that Israeli officials approved the operation with the intent of driving out the Palestinian population from the West Bank and annexing the territory.
Israel has long accused Iran of supplying armed factions in Jenin, particularly its refugee camp, with weapons. Palestinian terrorists have long been active in the city. Israel has been especially alarmed by the rise of the Jenin Brigades, a new armed group.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the UN body responsible for Palestinian refugees, alleged that Israel inflicted “forced displacement” on some 40,000 Palestinians. The Israeli government and research organizations have publicized findings in recent months showing numerous UNRWA-employed staff, including teachers and school principals, are active Hamas members, some of whom were directly involved in Hamas’s Oc t. 7 atrocities, while many others openly celebrated it.
CAIR’s latest accusation against Israel was not its first time stepping into controversy. In the 2000s, the organization was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing case. Politico noted in 2010 that “US District Court Judge Jorge Solis found that the government presented ‘ample evidence to establish the association’” of CAIR with Hamas.
According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), “some of CAIR’s current leadership had early connections with organizations that are or were affiliated with Hamas.” CAIR has disputed the accuracy of the ADL’s claim and asserted that it “unequivocally condemn[s] all acts of terrorism, whether carried out by al-Qa’ida, the Real IRA, FARC, Hamas, ETA, or any other group designated by the US Department of State as a ‘Foreign Terrorist Organization.’”
CAIR leaders have also found themselves embroiled in further controversy since Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7.
The head of CAIR, for example, said he was “happy” to witness Hamas’s rampage of rape, murder, and kidnapping of Israelis in what was the largest single-day slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.
“The people of Gaza only decided to break the siege — the walls of the concentration camp — on Oct. 7,” CAIR co-founder and executive director Nihad Awad said in a speech during the American Muslims for Palestine convention in Chicago last November. “And yes, I was happy to see people breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land, and walk free into their land, which they were not allowed to walk in.”
CAIR has accused Israel of committing atrocities beyond Gaza and the West Bank. In December, the Islamic group said the Jewish state was guilty of “ethnic cleansing” in Syria following the recent collapse of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad’s regime, despite the limited nature of Israel’s military operations in the neighboring country.
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