The Israeli Left’s War On Netanyahu

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The Israeli left is determined to bring down Prime Minister Netanyahu, and is pressuring him, for the sake of a hostage deal with Hamas, to agree to give up the IDF’s control of the Philadelphi Corridor. Instead, the leftists would have Israel rely on the use of electronic sensors along the Corridor, and depend as well on Egyptians stationed at the Egypt-Gaza border to prevent arms smuggling. More on this can be found here: “The Oslo effect,” by Melanie Phillips, JNS, September 5, 2024:

…Other arguments [on why Israel can give up control of the Philadelphi Corridor] have included getting Egypt to safeguard Philadelphi against Hamas and using electronic sensors to monitor it.

This is all utterly delusional. For two decades, Egypt was complicit in the construction and use of the Philadelphi tunnels; entrusting it with Israel’s security would be to put the fox in charge of the henhouse. Israeli reliance on electronic sensors was one of the reasons the Oct. 7 pogrom happened.

As for the IDF returning to the corridor after it pulled out, the same argument was used by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in the 2005 disengagement from Gaza when he pulled Israel out of Philadelphi—the issue over which Netanyahu resigned from that government. Just as international pressure meant the IDF never went back in despite the subsequent barrages from Gaza, so a return to the corridor would now be a total non-starter.

Despite the thousands on the streets, most Israelis get this. In one opinion poll, 79% agreed that Israel needed to control Philadelphi permanently to prevent weapons smuggling from Egypt to Gaza. When asked more emotively whether Israel should control Philadelphi “even at the expense of a hostage deal,” more respondents said it should than those who balked at preventing a hostage deal.

Gantz, Eizenkot and Gallant are part of a military and security establishment whose morally and intellectually bankrupt “conceptziya” brought about the Oct. 7 catastrophe in the first place.

Netanyahu, too, was part of that same establishment and in due course must be held to account for the heavy responsibility he bears.

However, those who aren’t blinded by a pathological hatred of him can see that he is holding off intense American pressure to pull out of Philadelphi, just as they can also see that America itself bears a significant measure of responsibility for the hostages’ fate.

The Biden administration forced Israel to proceed in Gaza far more slowly than the IDF judged necessary to defeat Hamas and thus save the hostages. Worse, for three months, the administration stopped Israel from entering Rafah—below which the six hostages were murdered last week. If Israel had been free to proceed at its own pace, those six captives and many others might have been saved….

Because the Israeli government listened to the Americans, it went gradually, city by city, north to south, in Gaza, when it ought to have attacked everywhere all at once, giving Hamas fighters no time to move from one city that was being hit to another where its operatives could be safe. And that three-month delay by the IDF in entering Rafah meant that Hamas had a long time both to prepare to defend against the onslaught, and to hide both its ownfighters and the hostages in the tunnels. Had the IDF swiftly swooped into Rafah, it might have been able to save many of those hostages, including the six whose bodies were recently found in a tunnel under that city.

The first such error was the 1993 Oslo Accords, which gave the Palestinians political power and status—with the Americans even training their police—on the assumption that they intended to live in peace alongside Israel.

Arafat never intended to honor his commitments under the Oslo Accords. He continued to have the PLO launch terror attacks against Israeli civilians. And in 2000, he rejected outright a generous territorial settlement that was offered to him by Israel’s then-Prime Minister, Ehud Barak. In the same year, he ignored the peace promises made by the Palestinians the Oslo Accords and started the Second Intifada, in which 1000 Israelis were killed and many thousands wounded, during the five years (2000-2005) of its existence.

The left’s attempt to “weaponize the hostages” by attacking Netanyahu for continuing to insist on the IDF’s control of the Philadelphi Corridor will not work. 79% of the Israeli public, when asked, said that they wanted Israel to hold onto the Corridor, and even when a different question is asked — “would you want to hold onto the Corridor even if it prevented a deal for the return of the hostages” — a majority of Israelis still answer yes. The left’s war on Netanyahu will likely not succeed; his refusal to yield to pressure from both the Americans and Hamas will eventually be appreciated, and the left’s attacks on him will come to naught. But should the Israeli left and the Biden-Harris administration somehow manage to force Netanyahu to yield on the Philadelphi Corridor “for the sake of the hostages,” the renewal of arms smuggling by Hamas, and the use of those arms to deadly effect on Israeli targets, will be correctly blamed on the left which, this time, after the Oslo Accords disaster, will not be able to recover.