Egypt Warns Israel to Stay Off Southern Gaza’s Philadelphi Corridor

Author: Published: October 29, 2023
By

David Israel

 –

Egyptian sources familiar with Cairo’s efforts to reduce the escalation of the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip on Sunday told the London-based Al-Araby Al-Jadeed that Egypt “sent severe warnings to the occupation government (that’s Israel to you and me) against carrying out any military operations or activities in the Salah al-Din (Philadelphi) corridor adjacent to the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, should Israel decide to initiate a ground invasion of the Strip.”

The Egyptians cited an article of the Camp David Accords that says Israel must seek Egyptian consent before intervening militarily in the Gaza Strip.

The Philadelphi Corridor is a narrow strip of land, 8.7 miles in length, along the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. Under the Camp David provisions, it was established as a buffer zone controlled and patrolled by Israel, to prevent smuggling of weapons, ammunition, and terrorists from Egypt to Gaza. Needless to say, the Gazans––in cooperation with the Egyptians––immediately went about digging countless tunnels under the Philadelphi Corridor which are in use to this day.

IDF soldiers uncovered electric cables in a seven-meter-deep tunnel with wooden walls, near the Philadelphi Corridor along the Egypt-Gaza border, April 5, 2005. / IDF

Following the 1994 Oslo Accords, Israel retained the security corridor, but after PM Ariel Sharon’s unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005, the Philadelphi deal with Egypt was terminated. Now the Egyptians are reluctant to relinquish control over the north side of the border zone to the invading IDF.

And it didn’t help that an Israeli warplane by mistake hit a border watchtower. According to Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, citing an Egyptian source, Cairo “notified the responsible authorities in Tel Aviv, through joint coordination links, of its rejection of the apology for targeting one of the Egyptian army’s watchtowers on the border strip last week.”

According to the same source, “Egyptian estimates indicate that targeting one of its military sites on the border was not by mistake, but rather comes within the framework of provocative actions, to push Cairo to take a unilateral decision on its part to disrupt the operation of the crossing, and then confront Palestinian anger.”

President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi on Saturday described the attack as “an impulsive reaction we may regret later.”

El-Sisi also referred to the drone attack from the Red Sea on the Sinai town of Taba, saying, “On Friday there were drones that entered Egyptian airspace in Taba and were shot down… Whatever place they came from, I warned before that the expansion of the scope of the conflict is not in the interest of the region. It will be a time bomb that will hurt us all. That is why I say to you: Please, Egypt is a sovereign state, and I hope that we all respect its sovereignty and status.”

No one in Egypt or anywhere else has any doubt that the attack drones were sent either by Iranian proxy Houthis in Yemen, or Iranian Revolutionary Guards vessels in the Red Sea, and were likely aimed at Eilat, but missed.

Meanwhile, Al-Araby Al-Jadeed cited a different Egyptian source that said Egypt “conveyed clear messages to the leadership of the Hamas movement, that it will be more flexible to thwart the Israeli side’s attempts to obstruct and disrupt the entry of aid or slow down its pace.”

The source also revealed that “the messages included assurances to the movement’s leadership that Egypt refuses to adopt any perceptions that condemn the Palestinian resistance, or label it as terrorism.”

El-Sisi said on Saturday that Egypt is “keen to play a positive role in alleviating the severity of the crisis by releasing prisoners and hostages in the Gaza Strip,” cautioning: “Not everything is talked about… I mean, when it ends, we will announce it.”

The source revealed that Cairo is “dealing with caution with the Israelis’ desire to prepare for a new prisoner deal, as well as their willingness to pay a price described as high in exchange for the release of the movement’s largest number of prisoners.”

The source noted that Cairo “fears that it will be implicated in a process of misinformation and deception as part of its military movements, and Egypt will bear responsibility after that.”

Netanyahu: Israel fighting second War of Independence

Author: Published: October 29, 2023

IDF launches ground invasion to crush Hamas in Gaza.

By MAAYAN JAFFE-HOFFMAN
Updated: OCTOBER 29, 2023 07:59
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to the media during a joint press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023 (photo credit: MAYA ALLERUZZO/POOL/VIA REUTERS)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to the media during a joint press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023
(photo credit: MAYA ALLERUZZO/POOL/VIA REUTERS)
The IDF entered the Gaza Strip and is operating on the ground with support from troops in the air and at sea, Israel’s political and military leadership said Saturday night.

“Last night, additional ground forces entered Gaza, marking the beginning of the second stage of the war, whose goal is to destroy the military and political capabilities of Hamas and to bring our kidnapped citizens back,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an evening briefing.

“We are only at the beginning of the road. The war will be tough and long,” the prime minister said. But he stressed, “We are prepared for it. This is our second War of Independence. This is our mission, our purpose in life, and together we will prevail.”

Netanyahu said that not only do “the people and the leadership stand behind our soldiers,” but also the international community is rooting for Israel.

“Our partners understand that if Israel doesn’t win, they will be next,” he said. “Many around the world understand well that Israel is not only fighting its war but a war for all of humanity, a war of humanity against barbarism.”

Smoke rises during Israeli airstrikes, in the Gaza Strip, as seen from the Israeli side of the border, on October 28, 2023 (credit: YONATAN SINDEL/FLASH90)
Smoke rises during Israeli airstrikes, in the Gaza Strip, as seen from the Israeli side of the border, on October 28, 2023 (credit: YONATAN SINDEL/FLASH90)

IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi had said earlier in the evening that the army’s “best soldiers, well-trained and prepared, are operating in Gaza.”

The ground operation began Friday evening and progressed throughout Shabbat, with plans for further escalation in the coming days as the number of known hostages rose to 229.

“Achievements demand risks, and, as we know, victory comes at a price,” Halevi said. “To expose and destroy the enemy, there is no other way than to enter its territory with force… We will remember to fight with determination, and we will win.”

National Unity Party Chairman Benny Gantz said that he believed the ground operation, alongside other efforts, could also advance the return of the captives.

IDF Spokesman R.-Adm. Daniel Hagari announced the ground invasion in two briefings over the weekend.

The IDF had been threatening a full ground invasion for more than two weeks, but due to a combination of reasons – some known and some unknown – a full incursion had yet to occur. On Thursday, the IDF sent troops inside Gaza to strike Hamas targets – both on the ground and via the sea. However, those troops entered and exited the strip on the same evening.

Senior Hamas terrorists eliminated

Overnight Friday, Israel also took out several senior Hamas terrorists who played strategic roles in the planning of the October 7 Hamas massacre that killed more than 1,400 Israelis.

Specifically, the IDF and Shin Bet (Israel Security Service) have eliminated the head of the Hamas aerial array, Atsam Abu Raffa, they said Saturday morning. He was responsible for managing Hamas’s anti-tank missile systems, drones, aerial surveillance, paragliders, and the organization’s air defense, the army said. As part of his role, he was involved in planning and executing the October 7 massacre, during which Hamas paragliders entered Israeli communities and launched drone attacks.

In addition, they assassinated Ratib Abu Tzahiba, commander of Hamas’ naval forces of the Gaza City Brigade. He was responsible for the recent attempt to infiltrate the maritime space near Zikim, the IDF said in a statement Saturday morning.

Furthermore, Shayetet 13 commandos overnight Friday carried out a targeted raid from the sea in the southern Gaza Strip, destroying Hamas terrorist infrastructure used by the organization’s naval commando force, the IDF said Friday afternoon.

Overnight Thursday, the IDF assassinated the commander of Hamas’s West Khan Yunis battalion, Madhat Mubasher, the army said.

In addition, just this last week, the IDF said it killed the deputy head of Hamas’s Intelligence Directorate, who was responsible for planning the October 7 massacre together with Yahya Sinwar; the commander of Hamas’s Northern Khan Yunis rockets array, Hassan Al-Abdullah; the commander of the North Khan Yunis Battalion of the Hamas terrorist organization, Taysir Mubasher; the deputy commander of the Nuseirat Battalion, who took part in the Kibbutz Be’eri massacre; the deputy commanders of the Shati and Sheikh Radwan battalions; and the head of the anti-tank missiles array of Hamas’s Northern Brigade, Ibrahim Alkhaser – as well as the commander of the Hamas aerial array in Gaza City, the head of Hamas training portfolio in Gaza City, the aerial defense officer of Hamas’ Zabra Tel Elhua Battalion, a Hamas weapons supply manager in Gaza City, the head of training for the Hamas aerial defense array in northern Gaza, and the deputy head of Hamas’s artillery array in the Gaza Strip.

Hagari said that their assassinations represented significant progress toward Israel achieving its goal of dismantling Hamas and would make it easier for the ground troops to do their job.

“Eliminating them facilitates the war’s progress and enables the forces on the ground to fight against a weaker enemy,” he said.

“Last night, the ground shook,” Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Saturday night. “We struck above ground and underground. The instructions to the forces are clear: The action will continue until a new order is given.”

He added that this is a war that will determine the next 75 years for Israel.

“All of us – the prime minister, the defense minister, the Security Cabinet, the extended cabinet, and the entire command chain – understand the enormity of the hour and the immense responsibility placed upon our shoulders,” Gantz concluded. “We also feel the pain and expectations of Israeli citizens.”

Over the weekend, IDF warplanes attacked about 150 underground targets in the northern Gaza Strip.

Hagari said 311 soldiers have been identified as dead since the Hamas massacre on October 7. In addition, 58 Israeli police were killed in the October 7 attack and the operation since.

Seth Frantzman contributed to this report.

Israeli ground forces ‘expanding’ activity inside Gaza, ramping up airstrikes — IDF

Author: Published: October 28, 2023

Internet, phone services collapse in Strip amid intensified operations, which officials stress are not full-scale offensive; Washington says it’s not ‘drawing red lines’ for Israel

By EMANUEL FABIAN 28 October 2023, 12:53 am   0
Explosions caused by Israeli airstrikes in the northern Gaza Strip, October 27, 2023. (AP/Abed Khaled)

Explosions caused by Israeli airstrikes in the northern Gaza Strip, October 27, 2023. (AP/Abed Khaled)

The Israeli military ramped up airstrikes in the Gaza Strip on Friday night and said it was expanding ground operations into the coastal enclave following several nights of limited raids.

Internet and phone services were down across Gaza amid reports by Palestinians that Israeli ground forces including tanks were operating within the Strip and heavy exchanges of gunfire could be heard.

“The Air Force is striking underground targets very significantly,” said IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari.

“In addition to the attacks that we carried out in recent days, ground forces are expanding their activity this evening. The IDF is acting with great force … to achieve the objectives of the war.”

For the last two days, IDF infantry forces and tanks have conducted limited operations in the Gaza Strip.

Hagari said the IDF will continue to strike Gaza City and surrounding areas in northern Gaza, and renewed his call for Palestinians to evacuate to the Strip’s south.

“We are prepared to defend in all arenas. We are acting in order to protect the security interests of the State of Israel,” he said.

This image grab from an AFP TV footage shows a salvo of rockets fired by Palestinian terrorists in Gaza City on October 27, 2023. (Yousef Hassouna/AFP)

The Hamas terror group’s military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, said it was confronting Israeli forces in Gaza and that “violent clashes” were taking place near Beit Hanoun in the northern part of the Palestinian enclave, and Bureij in the center.

US and Israeli officials told ABC News that the Israeli ground incursion in Gaza was not the expected large-scale offensive Israel has been threatening for three weeks — aimed to dismantle Hamas following its devastating October 7 onslaught into Israel. On that Saturday morning, some 2,500 terrorists streamed into Israel by land, sea, and air, killing over 1,400 people, a majority of them civilians in their homes and at an outdoor music festival in border communities across southern Israel. Hamas and allied terrorist factions also dragged over 220 hostages — including some 30 children — into the Gaza Strip where they remain captive.

An unnamed American source told ABC that the operation Friday was another limited one. And IDF spokesman Peter Lerner said the activity was not the major operation that has been expected since the devastating terror assault.

On Friday night, White House National Security spokesman John Kirby repeatedly refused to comment on the expanded activities, and said Washington would not draw “red lines” for Israel.

“We’re not drawing red lines for Israel,” Kirby said Friday on a call with reporters. “We’re going to continue to support them” but “since the very beginning we have, and will continue to have, conversations about the manner that they are doing this.”

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told a small group of foreign reporters earlier that Israel expects a long and difficult ground offensive into Gaza soon. It “will take a long time” to dismantle Hamas’ vast network of tunnels, he said, adding that he expected a lengthy phase of lower-intensity fighting as Israel destroys “pockets of resistance.”

Hamas had earlier called on world countries to “act immediately” to stop Israel’s response to its October 7 massacre.

Israel has vowed to destroy the Palestinian terror organization while minimizing harm to Gaza civilians.

Explosions caused by Israeli airstrikes in the northern Gaza Strip, October 27, 2023. (AP/Abed Khaled)

On Friday evening, terrorists in Gaza launched a series of rocket barrages into Israel, targeting southern and central Israeli cities. A foreign worker was moderately wounded after a rocket landed in agricultural land near Rishon Lezion, according to medics.

In Sderot, a pair of rockets fired from Gaza slammed into a home and an outdoor shelter. Some damage was caused but no one was harmed.

Gazan terrorists have launched thousands of rockets at Israel since October 7, killing and wounding dozens, and sending hundreds of thousands running for shelter, and the education of hundreds of thousands of children disrupted as schools remain shut or in a limited format.

The Israeli military on Friday night revealed that Hamas was using Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital as a main base of operations, providing visuals and intercepted audio as evidence of the terror organization’s activities.

Hagari said Israel has intelligence that there are several tunnels leading to the underground base from outside the hospital so that Hamas officials do not need to enter the hospital to reach it. But Hagari added that there is also an entrance to the underground complex from within one of the wards.

Hagari also said Israel has “concrete evidence” that “hundreds of terrorists flooded into the hospital to hide” following the October 7 terror onslaught.

Hamas’s internal security also has a command center inside Shifa Hospital, from which it directs rocket fire on Israel and stores weapons, he added.

A satellite image issued by the IDF shows what the military says are Hamas command centers located underneath Shifa Hospital in Gaza (IDF)

Overnight Thursday-Friday, Israel sent tanks, infantry forces, and Navy commandos into Gaza for a second limited incursion, the Israel Defense Forces said Friday, the second night in a row that forces briefly entered the Strip ahead of the expected full ground offensive.

The raid near the Shejaiya neighborhood in eastern Gaza City was carried out by infantry, combat engineering and armored forces, with Israeli Air Force drones and combat helicopters providing air cover, the military said.

The IDF said it carried out artillery strikes and airstrikes against sites belonging to the Hamas terror group, including anti-tank guided missile launch sites and command centers.

Several Hamas members were also hit by the forces, the IDF said, adding that all the troops left the area after several hours, and that no Israeli injuries were reported.

Additionally, the IDF said it killed the commander of Hamas’s West Khan Younis Battalion, Madhat Mubasher, in an overnight airstrike in the Gaza Strip.

The IDF said Mubasher “took part in sniper attacks and was responsible for large explosive devices [used] against IDF forces and Israeli towns.”

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Also overnight, forces of the Israeli Navy’s Shayetet 13 commando unit carried out a raid in the southern Gaza Strip from the sea, the IDF said.

The forces destroyed Hamas infrastructure and operated in a compound used by the terror group’s naval commando forces, according to the IDF.

Other Navy forces participated in the mission, and all the Shayetet 13 commandos left the area and returned to Israel after the operation, the IDF added.

Hamas in a statement Friday claimed to have repelled the Israeli raid from the sea.

The IDF has for several weeks been preparing a full-scale incursion aimed at rooting out the Gaza-ruling terror group following its murderous October 7 onslaught in southern Israel.

It has pounded the Strip on an unprecedented scale in order to eliminate potential threats to ground troops once the order finally comes. The airstrikes have flattened entire neighborhoods, causing a level of destruction unseen in the last four wars between Israel and Hamas.

The IDF said Friday that over the past day, it has carried out more than 250 airstrikes against Hamas sites in the Gaza Strip, with targets including Hamas tunnels, command centers, rocket launching positions, and dozens of operatives.

Also Friday, the military said that at least 233 hostages were kidnapped and taken to the Gaza Strip during the devastating assault on October 7.

IDF spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said the military has notified the families of 229 hostages that their loved ones are currently being held in the enclave.

The number does not include four released hostages — mother and daughter Judith and Natalie Ra’anan, who were freed a week ago, and elderly women Yocheved Lifshitz and Nurit Cooper, freed on Monday night.

Hagari said the number is not final as the military continues to investigate new information.

However, a member of a Hamas delegation visiting Russia claimed that the terror group still does not know where all the people kidnapped by Palestinian terrorists during their attack are being held.

The Hamas official, named as Abu Hamid, claimed in an interview with Russia’s semi-official Kommersant news outlet that the terror group has always been willing to release civilians, but “needs time to find them.” He additionally claimed members of various groups are holding hostages, and that a ceasefire was needed to allow Hamas to carry out its search, find the hostages and then release them.

The updated hostage figures from the military came after Gallant on Thursday promised to make “every effort” to return the hostages as he reiterated that a ground operation was looming and vowed to win the war, asserting that the country’s next 75 years largely depend on it.

In a primetime televised address, the defense minister said: “We are in decisive moments. This is a war for our home and we will win it. It’s either us or them.”

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant holds a press conference on October 26, 2023. (GPO/Screenshot)

On Wednesday, The New York Times reported that Israel had agreed to a request from the United States to temporarily delay the planned Gaza ground incursion to give Washington more time to deploy additional air defense systems to protect its troops in the region.

The US was also reportedly concerned that Israel lacks achievable military goals for its operations in Gaza, leading to fears that the IDF is not yet ready for a ground incursion.

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry says the Israeli strikes have killed over 7,000 people, many of them children. The figures issued by the terror group cannot be independently verified, and are believed to include its own terrorists and gunmen killed in Israel and in Gaza, and the victims of what Israel says are hundreds of errant Palestinian rockets that have landed in the Strip since the war began. Israel says it killed 1,500 Hamas terrorists inside Israel on and after October 7.

Agencies and Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.

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