Israel must never abandon the Philadelphi Corridor - opinion

I’ve had unique opportunities to meet and build relationships with key players in various fields, including the political echelon in Israel.

There are two key moments that I shared with Israeli politicians that are very significant and shed light on today’s dilemmas regarding the war against Hamas in Gaza at this important juncture in time.

In 1988, I traveled from New York City, where I lived at the time, to Israel with my wife and our first child, who was only six months old. At that time, Ariel (Arik) Sharon, whom I had met various times, was a minister in a Likud-led government. I called him to schedule a visit.

When he received me in his government office, he was the minister of Industry and Trade.

Two years later, he became minister of Housing and Construction, a powerful position that he relished because it gave him the opportunity to implement his dream of settling the Land of Israel.

It was well known that Sharon was not only a brilliant military general but also a right-wing politician with a vision of a “Greater Israel.” He bought an apartment in the Old City of Jerusalem, where he hung an Israeli flag outside a window, boldly displaying it to those walking along the main street of the Arab Quarter.

When my wife and I (and our very young baby) arrived at his office, he had a particular topic in mind. He told me how important it was to promote Jewish settlement in Gaza. To enable that mission, he wanted my family to build a factory in Gaza to manufacture prefab housing components, which would facilitate the quick and easy building of family homes there.

He included creating jobs in Gaza as part of his sales pitch. I understood that to mean for the Jewish residents of Gaza, but perhaps he meant for the Arab population. 

To encourage me to undertake this mission, he proposed that the Israeli government would fly me and my wife (and infant) to Gaza and give us an aerial tour of the area, as well as an on-the-ground tour of where he would recommend the factory be located.

Introducing us to the Gaza area, he opened a large map, covering most of his desk, of southern Israel, including Gaza, which was under full Israeli sovereignty at the time. He pointed out where the Jewish settlements would be, as well as where he recommended putting the factory.

The Philadelphi Corridor

He noted that parts of Gaza might come under Arab control in the future, but the number of Israelis living there would ensure Israel’s long-term sovereignty over the area. He then ran his finger over the Philadelphi Corridor, emphasizing that this was the border between Gaza and Egypt. He asserted that Israel would never abandon this corridor, as doing so would result in Israel losing control over the weapons flow from Egypt into Gaza, transforming it into a militarized stronghold and posing a threat to the State of Israel.

I didn’t know much about the geography of Gaza at the time. I had never heard of the Philadelphi Corridor, but that finger drawn over that border and the words warning about what could happen if we ever gave up control of that border stuck in my mind forever.

Sharon ran for prime minister in 2000 with a campaign largely focused on protesting any withdrawal from Gaza. Winning by a landslide, he became the prime minister of Israel in March 2001. By June 2005, his government had approved a complete withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

Since then, no one has been able to understand Sharon’s motives for reversing all of his prior declarations, beliefs, and principles, pulling out 9,000 Israelis living in Gaza, and abandoning all of it, including the Philadelphi Corridor.

WITH CLEAR hindsight, we now know that the abandonment of the Philadelphi Corridor is what directly led to the October 7 massacre.

Before the Disengagement, Israel controlled Gaza’s borders, ensuring no weapons entered the Strip. However, with the pullout of Israeli troops, the Philadelphi Corridor became exactly what Sharon said it would become: an underground smuggling highway of weapons and bombs from Egypt to Gaza that led to years of bombardment of Sderot and, ultimately, to the invasion and massacre on October 7, 2023.

We can’t repeat the same mistake of abandoning the Philadelphi Corridor.

Another historic meeting I attended, together with Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the center’s associate dean and director of Global Social Action, was with then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in the boardroom off the Prime Minister’s Office, where the Sunday morning Cabinet meetings are held. The intimate meeting took place just a few weeks before the signing of the Oslo Accords.

As our half-hour meeting was coming to an end, Cooper asked one last question: “Aren’t you worried that perhaps this agreement is too big a risk to take? What if it doesn’t work out?”

To which Rabin gave two answers. “Yes, it’s a risk,” he said, “but we have to take risks for peace.”

He then added, “It’s not irreversible. It’s not forever. The first rocket they launch into Israel, the first violation of the peace agreement, we will go back in and take it over again.”

Did he realize that it would be impossible to reinvade Gaza and regain control because of world pressure, as we can see so clearly now? Was he sincere in his response? I don’t know.

Yet what I know now, without a doubt, is that stopping this war before its goals are achieved, based on the assumption that we can resume fighting later on if the agreement we sign now is violated, is perilously naive.

As Cooper asked then, we should be asking now: “Mr. Prime Minister, isn’t that too big a risk to take?”

The writer is the founder and chairman of OneFamily Fund, Israel’s largest organization caring for all of Israel’s victims of terror, without distinctions, since 2001, and doubling its operations since the October 7 massacre. This opinion piece was reviewed and approved by Rabbis Hier and Cooper.