The Legitimate Alternative to Holding the Philadelphi Corridor

Israel has been faced with a most horrible Sophie’s choice dilemma. Capitulate to the demands of Hamas and withdraw from the Philadelphi corridor to reach a deal to release the hostages with the result being Hamas rearming to surely fight and murder more Jews in the future; or hold the Philadelphi corridor and condemn many of the hostages to continued torture and death, as sadly just happened to six beautiful souls.

Israel signed a peace treaty with Egypt in order to have  peace. The core principle of this peace treaty is not a romanticized notion of Israel as a Jewish nation living in harmony among enlightened Arab neighbors, the core principle of peace (for us) is for there to be NO DEAD JEWS.

Prime Minister Netanyahu’s rationale demand of Israel’s control of the Philadelphi corridor is only necessary because Egypt has proven it cannot be trusted to stop the flow of deadly weapons to Hamas. Whether it cannot control the arms flow because of incompetence or corruption (and we hope not complicity), should not be Israel’s problem. This is a de facto violation of the peace treaty with Israel—and the assumption by Israel that Egypt cannot or will not stop the flow of weapons to Hamas means there is in fact not a real peace treaty with Israel and Egypt, only a piece of paper.

So if the barrier to returning our hostages is Israel withdrawing from the Philadelphi corridor, it must be demanded by the world that Egypt secede a defensible corridor to Israel in the Sinai border with Gaza to Israel in place of the Philadelphi corridor so such a deal can be completed. Ideally, this should be permanent but at minimum for an extended period such as twenty years.

And to those who protest against Israel’s right to defend itself from murderers who hide behind civilians; this could be a more productive and honest cause to get behind, if they truly care about the lives of Gazans and want the war to end.

To close with some historical points so we learn from them:

When a country wins a  defensive war, by international law it has the right to annex the land territories it wins. Israel had every right to annex the Sinai  (UN resolution 242 notwithstanding, which singled out Israel to partially forfeit this right). Instead, Israel took a chance on a peace treaty with Egypt in the hope it would lead to co-existence with the Arab countries (and also due to intensive pressure by a United States who wanted  the peace treaty as a pathway for them to supplant the Soviet Union as the military patron of the middle eastern oil producing nations).

Implicitly Israel thought the Arabs world would evolve to become more civilized and democratic over time. They did not anticipate (and probably few did) that instead large populations in Islamic countries would instead become more radical and barbaric with the rise of movements such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and a radical Iran, who would take terrorism of the Jewish state to new unspeakable heights.

It is unfair to retrospectively second guess whether the peace treaty with Egypt at Camp David was the best decision—Menachem Begin certainly cared for Jewish lives as much as any single individual in the last 100 years and surely used the best judgment he could.

But history has now proven it a failure and this is the result:

1. 1200 precious lives on Oct 7 and over 700 Israeli “soldiers” are now dead (the Western concept that the death of a soldier is somehow a more justifiable death than others is a disgusting Western idea—they aren’t “soldiers,” they are husbands, wives, parents, and children who are forced to bravely fight evil—and they did not deserve to die either). Without the “peace treaty” these precious souls would almost surely still be among us.
2. No safe and defensible border.
3. A billion dollar in lost Sinai oil revenues that could have made Israel not-dependent on American foreign aid and ultimately American and world pressure to not fight wars how they should be fought—to win.
4. A heavily armed Egypt with modern American and Western weapons, who with a change of will or leadership could pose a significant threat to invade Israel and its population that would not occur if Israel had kept the Sinai.
5. Antisemitism in the world could not be any worse (a submissive Israel did not make us loved).