It took the Israel Defense Forces three months to defeat Hamas terrorists holed up in Rafah city and along the border with Egypt. This key strategic area is called the Philadelphi corridor, and Israel has vowed to keep control of it in the near-term as part of its war against Hamas.
The terrorist group used this border area with Egypt to smuggle weapons and create the war machine behind the Oct. 7 attack. Keeping control of the corridor, and preventing Hamas from re-arming via the border, is key to defeating the group and bring stability and peace to the wider region.
Israel has been under intense pressure to give up control of the Philadelphi corridor. First, the Biden administration warned Israel against an operation in Rafah in the first months of 2023. Once Israel secured the corridor from Hamas and showed the world the terror infrastructure Hamas built in Rafah, proponents of a ceasefire have argued Israel should be willing to give up this key strategic gain in Gaza. But leaving the border area would let Hamas regrow its terror tentacles, benefitting Iran, Russia and other countries that back Hamas.
To understand how important this area it is, it is worth seeing how much Hamas invested in building terrorist infrastructure along the border with Egypt.
Hamas first seized control of Gaza in 2007 in a coup against the western-backed Palestinian Authority, which controlled Gaza and parts of the West Bank at the time. Israel had left Gaza in 2005, and Hamas capitalized on the power vacuum by taking control of the border. A European Union Border Assistance Mission was supposed to monitor the border and assist the Palestinian Authority. However, with the PA chased out by Hamas and the terrorists in control, the EU mission left the border, and the result was a terror state-in-the-making in Gaza.
Since 2007, Hamas has used the border to smuggle weapons underground, importing materials that can be used to produce rockets in factories that it established in Gaza. According to a study at the Begin Sadat Center for Strategic Studies in 2004, the year before Israel’s disengagement from Gaza, 281 rockets were fired into Israel; in 2006, the year after disengagement, a total of 946 rockets were fired. Hamas also imported weapons that flowed to Gaza from Libya after the fall of the Gaddafi regime. Israel has long expressed concern about this weapons flow.
Israel’s decision in May of 2024 to launch an operation in Rafah and secure the Philadelphi corridor is not the first time the Israel Defense Forces have been forced to go into the border area and root out terrorists. It conducted a similar operation during the Second Intifada, when terrorist groups were weaker. Even back then, the desire by these groups to exploit the border area to build weapons was clear.
Fast-forward to 2024. Israel has found more than 200 Hamas tunnels in Rafah, stretching 10 miles. The Philadelphi corridor along the border with Egypt is almost nine miles long, meaning the tunnels Hamas built underground are a web of shafts that are longer than the border itself. Some of them crossed into Egypt over the years and were used for smuggling. However, underground smuggling is not the only way that Hamas used the border as a strategic terror asset.
Control of the Philadelphi corridor enabled Hamas to control humanitarian aid and goods entering Gaza from Egypt. It also enables it to control the access of non-governmental organizations to Gaza. In both cases, Hamas used its control of the border to make itself appear to be the legitimate power in Gaza. It could choke off the aid destined for average people and use it, in a mafia-like manner, to distribute aid to supporters. It used its control of the border to decide who entered Gaza and monitor those who worked there.
This gave Hamas, a terrorist group, unprecedented power. This is how it trained thousands of fighters in 24 battalions and prepared them to attack Israel on Oct. 7. Hamas also used the border crossing as part of its connections with the outside world. When its leaders, such as Ismail Haniyeh, left Gaza, they left through Rafah. This is how Hamas managed ties with Iran, Russia, Qatar, Turkey, China and other countries that it sought support from.
To weaken and defeat Hamas, Israel must control the Philadelphi corridor for an extended period of time, until the international community will help make sure that this terrorist group will no longer threaten Israel as it did in the past. Hamas has proven that its years of rule in Gaza pose a genocidal threat to Israel. It built up a terror army capable of committing the Oct. 7 atrocities via its control of the border with Egypt. Defeating Hamas requires starting in the place it gained much of its power from: the border with Egypt.
Seth Frantzman is the author of “The October 7 War: Israel’s Battle for Security in Gaza” (2024), an adjunct fellow at The Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a senior analyst for The Jerusalem Post.