The Philadelphia Axis, in which Israel is also avoiding ground maneuvers for the time being, was an arbitrary, not particularly creative code name that the IDF computer issued to the security buffer zone between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. Israel established it after ceding the Sinai Peninsula and signing the peace agreement with Egypt. It controlled it for 23 years, not always with much success, until in September 2005, in secession, it handed it over to Egypt.
Few remember today: the prime minister of those days, Ariel Sharon, opposed giving up Philadelphia.
The Shin Bet also objected, but as in many other matters - the position of the legal advisers was the one that decided, arguing that as long as Israel holds Philadelphia, it is not possible to declare Israel's complete withdrawal from the Strip. The strip of land between the Gaza Strip and Kerem Shalom was therefore excluded from the Sinai disengagement agreement, And the government authorized Egypt to keep 750 soldiers and heavy weapons there.The Rafah area was handed over to the Palestinians.
The almost immediate result was that the number of tunnels soared, and correspondingly, the amount of weapons and weapons being smuggled from Sinai to the Strip also increased.
This ongoing occurrence was only a precursor to the occupation of the axis from the Palestinian side by Hamas in the summer of 2007, an event that gave rise to the famous blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt on the Gaza Strip.
Now, in a war of iron swords, this axis, about 100 meters wide and 14 km long, is the hole in the bucket, the breach in the dam. Through it and under it, Hamas can still smuggle - and indeed does smuggle - weapons and ammunition to Rafah and the Gaza Strip.
This is what he did for many years, under the noses of the Egyptians who were supposed to monitor what was going on there, and what is even worse - under the noses of Israel.
Another glorious intelligence failure, which after the war will have to be investigated.
., photo: AP
Former Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman says that the reality that the Philadelphia axis is out of our hands reminds him of an open faucet from which the water flows non-stop.
"Someone with a shovel runs from corner to corner and tries in vain to dry the floor, but everything leaks or drips in."
"Smuggling continued even during the fighting days," he stated just this week.
When Defense Minister Yoav Galant was recently asked if there are still active tunnels under the Philadelphia axis that are used for smuggling, he replied briefly, almost curtly: "A little."
According to one security source, 12 tunnels, some military and some criminal, are still active under the Philadelphia axis.
A second source talks about dozens of tunnels.
Just a few weeks ago, a fear was expressed that abductees would be smuggled through these tunnels into the Sinai area, and it was reported that Israel is working in various ways to prevent such an event from occurring.
This week, news was published that the abductees may have already been smuggled through the tunnels from Khan Yunis to Rafah, but there is no certainty about that either.
The question marks regarding the location of the abductees are often more than the exclamation marks, security officials admit.
Israel avoids publishing information about its plans regarding Rafah and the Philadelphia axis.
"The IDF will hit Hamas wherever necessary," says the military, but the understanding there is that a military operation, even a limited one, will force the IDF to maneuver in Rafah and the nearby tent camps, which now house hundreds of thousands of refugees from the northern Gaza Strip, unless they are sent back north.
Mines and RPGs
The head of the MLA during the disengagement period, Major General (Ret.) Giora Eiland, estimates that Israel "does not really know right now what is happening, if it is happening, under the Philadelphia Axis, just as it did not know what was happening there before October 7.
"What is absolutely clear is that the insane amounts of standard weapons not produced in Gaza, which were discovered during the fighting, did not fall from the sky. They arrived in the Strip for years, via Philadelphia. These are, for example, the (improved) RPG-29 missiles, removed parts of rockets , in mines and other types of mining.
Over the years, a huge amount of smuggling was conducted here, also above the ground, among other things through bribes that were slipped into the pockets of Egyptian officials."
Mass flight: Palestinians flee the fighting in southern Khan Yunis, towards Rafah
MK Amit Halevi (Likud), a member of the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Security Committee, also assesses, based on information he collected: "There is smuggling in Philadelphia, even today.
The fact that so far the axis has not been captured by the IDF shows our weakness and lack of control in the Strip."
The fate of the Philadelphia axis in today's post-war scenarios will probably be decided in the talks that are already underway between Israel, Egypt and the US. Israel is meanwhile refraining from a military operation along the axis, mainly due to Egyptian sensitivity, against the background of Egyptian President al-Sisi's fear that the 800,000 refugees from the northern Gaza Strip Those who are currently crowding the Rafah areas will breach the Egyptian border and settle in Sinai.
Israel, for its part, wants to keep the Palestinian-Gaza officials away from the Rafah checkpoint and station Israeli forces there.
There, and along the entire strip of land, from the southeastern end of the strip to its northwestern end, which abuts the Mediterranean Sea.
Israel also wants to expand the strip by several hundred meters, but it is doubtful whether the Americans will approve it.
About two decades ago, when a similar plan was on the agenda, then Attorney General Meny Mazuz himself bothered the Philadelphia delegate, but rejected the plan when he was informed that it involved the destruction of 3,000 homes.
Another plan is now on the table: the construction of a salari wall, underground, which will be built on the Egyptian side of the border of the Gaza Strip and apparently neutralize the tunnels.
Egypt previously built a similar wall several tens of meters deep into the ground, but Hamas managed to dig several tunnels under it.
The US (along with other countries) has already agreed in principle to share in the burden of financing the underground wall. It will operate in a similar way to the way in which a similar, existing, underground barrier operates, which already blocks the penetration of tunnels from the Gaza Strip into Israeli territory. However, the administration needs to achieve Budgetary approval for this from Congress, and the road is still long.
On top of that, Israel wants to install warning systems along the Philadelphia axis, which will learn in real time about attempts to dig tunnels again in the area and operate drones over the area. Egypt opposes this demand. It sees it as an infringement of its sovereignty there. Diaa Rashvan, Director of the Government Information Bureau In Egypt, he warned this week that any Israeli move to occupy the Philadelphia axis would lead to a grave and serious threat to relations between Israel and Egypt.
On the other hand, Prime Minister Netanyahu warned that without a change in reality also along the Philadelphia axis, the Gaza Strip will return within a few years to the extent of the armaments that characterized it before October 7. "The Philadelphia axis must be in our hands, and it must be closed.
Obviously, any other arrangement will not guarantee the demilitarization we want," Netanyahu clarified.
Reverse smuggling?
Eiland says that along with the dismemberment of the strip south of Gaza City, which was done three weeks late, on the very first day of the war it was right to seize the Philadelphia axis, "not only to stop the smuggling from there, but also to greatly expand the corridor there.
., Photo: Gideon Markovich
"It is impossible to keep the corridor as it is today, only about 100 meters wide," Eiland says.
"You need at least 500 meters there, which should be completely clean. It's a shame that it wasn't done at the beginning. Who knows what has gone on there since then, under the surface of the ground. Theoretically, there could also be reverse smuggling - not only from Egypt to the Gaza Strip, but also from the Gaza Strip to Egypt. Theoretically, it's possible It is impossible to know whether the hostages were smuggled to Sinai. Therefore, the delay in taking action here may turn out to be fatal."
The delay is already a fact. What are we doing right now?
"Right now it's much more complicated," Eiland replies.
"Instead of 200,000 people, you have a population of about a million people in the Rafah area. The friction is expected to be much higher, especially when you want to expand the corridor and destroy built-up areas for that purpose. This is also connected to the issue of 'the day after' - if we had accepted the American demand and entered into discussions about The day after', it would have been possible to come two or three months ago with a targeted demand regarding the Philadelphia axis, as part of the overall Gaza series. This would have come up against the US and Egypt in a way that would have greatly reduced the chances of smuggling from Egypt to the Gaza Strip, in ways that I will not detail here.
Now there is indeed a dialogue with the Egyptians, but without the broad and comprehensive context, which is a shame."
Is a military operation still relevant?
"I doubt it. Even if we do it successfully, and even if we find tunnels and destroy them, there is at least one thing we will no longer be able to gain: Israel itself is currently delivering supplies to the Strip - flour and food, which is even more problematic than weapons. There are still plenty of Kalashnikovs there, And what is missing is flour and food, so it is a much more significant lever. Given that this is the reality - what is the point of conducting a campaign in Philadelphia now to tighten the siege on the Strip, when we ourselves break the siege on them in the name of humanitarianism and provide them with food and food? What is the point of conducting a campaign with prices that are not Simple people in Philadelphia to prevent smuggling from there, when we ourselves give them flour, water and fuel due to American pressure?"
Was the government wrong here?
"In my opinion, yes. On October 7, Gaza, which de facto became a state 18 years ago, attacked the State of Israel. The first thing an attacked country does against another country that attacks it is to ask itself: What are my advantages vis-à-vis the other side? What is the advantage ours? In order to defeat the state of Gaza, we have no choice but to impose a siege on it, as many countries have done throughout history that have found themselves in similar situations
. - You sentence the kidnapped to death.
This is the truth, because without it there is no real pressure currently being exerted on Sinwar.
This should be echoed, and let them decide what is more moral and what is more just."
36 million dollars a month
The Philadelphia delegation, established after the peace agreement with Egypt, left thousands of Rafah residents on the Egyptian side.
Families were separated.
Already then the first tunnels were dug.
At first they were used to keep in touch between families.
Then goods and drugs began to be smuggled through them, and after the Oslo Accords also heavy weapons, which were used for the first time in the Wall Tunnel incidents (1996).
When the second intifada broke out, the set of tunnels was further expanded, and many weapons flowed through them into the Gaza Strip.
The month of May 2004 provided one of the most difficult images burned into Israeli collective memory from the Philadelphia axis: IDF soldiers kneeling in the sand, in a row, looking for the remains of their five comrades, an officer and four soldiers, who were killed in an APC explosion in the axis.
The APC was hit by an RPG missile fired at it, and the high explosive it was carrying, weighing a ton, exploded.
The soldiers were killed in such a way that it was difficult to identify or locate them.
During the rescue operation of the APC and the crushed bodies from the Philadelphia axis, two more soldiers were killed. This event occurred only 24 hours after six Givati soldiers were killed in an explosion of an APC in the Zeyton neighborhood of Gaza, after which the IDF launched Operation Rainbow, the purpose of which was to locate tunnels vintage.
., photo: AP
Another 16 months passed, and after the disengagement, in September 2005, the Palestinian Authority took over the axis.
She held it for a relatively short time.
Hamas, which won the Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006, kidnapped Gilad Shalit through a tunnel in the Philadelphia area.
In 2007, he seized power in the Gaza Strip and threw the Palestinian Authority members from the rooftops, and the entire axis from the Gazan side passed into the hands of the terrorist organization.
The days of Hamas in Gaza turned the Philadelphia axis into a thriving business.
The tunnels were widened and deepened, and new ones were dug.
On the eve of the cast lead operation, their number was estimated at about 500, and the organization's revenue for the goods that passed through the tunnels was about 36 million dollars a month.
Everything went there: cars, clothes, drugs, medicine, liquor - and weapons.
A lot of weapons.
The tunnels were dug from basements of houses, orchards and olive groves.
Each tunnel was dug in a period of two to two weeks.
The owners of the houses or fields from which the tunnels were mined received a percentage of the proceeds of the smuggling.
At one point, the Rafah Municipality required the owners of the tunnels to have a business license, and even charged them, and still charges, a fee for connecting them to water and electricity.
At its peak, the factory employed 70,000 people.
The Bedouin clans Abu Samhadana and Abu Rish ruled most of it.
Their profits were huge.
About 100 thousand dollars were invested in the construction of an average tunnel.
The daily turnover of such a tunnel averaged half a million shekels.
At the beginning of the previous decade, when the Egyptians discovered many weapons on the Egyptian side, and realized that the tunnels were a danger not only to Israel but to them as well, they injected gas into many of them, and with the help of the US began to build an underground barrier. A friend of Hamas and a man of the Muslim Brotherhood, played the cards again, and the tunnels had a renewed, even bigger paradise.
Only when President al-Sisi ousted Morsi from power did Egypt begin to act with an iron fist to eradicate the phenomenon.
Since al-Sisi's ascension to power until Operation Rock Ethan, and also during it, Egypt destroyed in various ways 1,639 tunnels that connected Sinai to Gaza.
It was a response to the terrorist acts carried out by Hamas and ISIS in Egypt and the Sinai Peninsula.
The Egyptian army blew up the tunnels with explosives and flooded many of them with water.
Over the years, on routine days and in many operations, Israel also acted against the tunnels, using special combat engineering teams subordinated to the Gaza Division.
In Operation Rainbow, for example, tunnels were located, blocked, or blown up, and also in Operation Cast Lead (2009) and later in Tzuk Eitan (2014), Israel acted against the tunnels under the axis.
Bribing officials and soldiers
For many years, the smuggling of weapons into the Gaza Strip was carried out through the Philadelphia tunnels while bribing Egyptian soldiers and officials, while the Egyptian army often turned a blind eye to what was going on.
During the days of President Mubarak, the smuggling route of weapons and missile parts passed from Iran through the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea, then through the deserts of Sudan and Egypt to the Sinai Peninsula, and from there to the Gaza Strip.
The strengthening of ISIS has led to many smuggling of ISIL from Islamist organizations in Libya to ISIS-Sinai. According to foreign publications, Israel also took part in operations against ISIS-Sinai, which assisted Egypt in this matter.
Even today, Israel believes that it is possible to reach a beneficial conclusion with Egypt on the basis of common interests, perhaps with American mediation.
Still, this time it might be more complicated for al-Sisi.
The public in Israel is not aware of the gap between the Egyptian president, who currently maintains the peace agreement with Israel and even collaborates with it in military, intelligence and economic cooperation - and the mood of the masses in Egypt, many of whom hate and are hostile to Israel because that is how they were raised and educated, religiously and/or politically.
We saw this in Alexandria, where crowds screamed: "Ya Qasim, Ya Habib, hit and destroy Tel Aviv", and in the calls of the crowds in the streets of Cairo for Nasrallah to shoot Tel Aviv, and also in Tahrir Square, where the crowds broke through the barriers, waved Palestinian flags and tore up pictures of a Sissy.
E-Sisi is wary of this public opinion, and recognizes its power and the danger it poses to his rule.
He allows himself to attack radical Islam only when it comes to events that take place far away from here.
For example, when ISIS carried out an attack on Christians in France, and even beheaded one of the victims there (in November 2015, ISIS killed 130 people in France and wounded 352) - Al-Sisi slammed his religious priests at Al-Azhar University with harsh words.
In a speech he gave at the time on the occasion of the Prophet Muhammad's birthday, al-Sisi demanded that radical Islam change its approach "to form a correct discourse" and "from a more enlightened perspective."
"It is impossible," he said at the time, that Islamic thought "upset the whole world and turn the nation and all Muslims in the world into a source of pain, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world. It is unacceptable that the ideology we sanctified would be a source of worry, danger, killing and destruction among all The other nations..."
Sisi did not say any of this after the Palestinian massacre in the Gaza Envelope - a widespread, severe and many times more difficult massacre.
Al-Sisi did not return to Al-Azhar again to hurl similar things at the leaders of this important religious institution and give a nod to its leaders, even though they saluted the terrorist attack by Hamas and the massacre that was carried out.
A-Sisi's silence
Al-Sisi's silence is even more thundering this time, because after the October 7 massacre, Al-Azhar predicted that "the end of Israel - a malignant disease in the heart of the Arab Islamic nation - will be doom."
The heads of al-Azhar wished a "kidney" for the Jews, the "descendants of monkeys and pigs", the "killers of the prophets", the "accursed" and the "enemies of humanity".
Why is this all about Philadelphia?
Because al-Sisi wants to secure himself also on the home front, from home.
That's why he talks about the sacred Egyptian sovereignty, and that no grain of sand will be transferred to Israel.
Although he maintains extensive behind-the-scenes relations with Israel in many and varied fields, and even came to the rescue of helping us realize the hostage deal about 55 days ago, and assisting, as requested by the US, in the transfer of aid to Gaza, but we do not hear him coming out against the Jihad and the "martyrs" ", or against the use by its extremists of the concept of "ribat" (war and religious struggle to defend a territory considered Islamic).
We will not see him, in the context of the massacre in Otef, attacking the clergy in Egypt, many of whom are even today ready to accept the Jews only as a religion, but not as a nation that holds as sovereign a land that is considered Islamic.
This perception is so ingrained among many in Egypt, a country with which we signed a peace agreement more than 40 years ago, that even a leader like al-Sisi, whose ties to Israel are excellent, does not allow himself to belittle a street that could threaten his rule.
This is al-Sisi's base, and he will be very careful and think twice before making a repeat of his founding words from six years ago, in front of Al-Azhar elders.
A similar caution, based on the desire not to upset Egypt, led at the beginning of the war to the Israeli decision to avoid capturing Rafah and Philadelphia.
Israel is now careful about the honor of Egypt and Esisi, and is aware of their sensitivities on the Philadelphia issue.
In retrospect, this consideration may turn out to be a mistake.
If Israel does not achieve an effective arrangement, which will block the axis for years from smuggling - sooner or later, the flow of weapons and IMD into the Strip will resume in exactly the same way as it was conducted under Israel's nose for many years.
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