‘The most significant part of Rafah from an Israeli point of view is the Philadelphia Corridor’

‘The most significant part of Rafah from an Israeli point of view is the Philadelphia Corridor’

I can tell you that the most significant part of Rafa from an Israeli point of view militarily and I guess from hamas’s point of view too is What’s called the Philadelphia Corridor that’s the corridor at the side between Egypt and um Rafa and between Gaza and so it’s 12 met 12 kilometers long it’s not big Israel has gone in about a quarter of the way only 3 kilometers but as far as the Rafa border crossing that’s why it’s closed they said they have already identified tunnel shafts that is the area in which um Hamas from which Hamas was smuggling goods and military equipment from Egypt into Gaza so that’s a significant military objective from the Israeli point of view uh and that I think is where it’s focusing its um its military that is its ground troops at the moment we have seen air strikes overnight in Rafa and what Israel says is that all of this in a statement from the Prime Minister last night uh is meant to put the pressure on Hamas while negotiations for ceasefire continue well as you mentioned there um ceasefire talks stalling in the past 24 hours after Israel rejected a deal that Hamas had agreed to Iris well we don’t know very much about the actual terms what Hamas did and it was a breakthrough moment hexi uh Hamas said it was accepting in principle a deal that was um presented to it finessed if you like by negotiators in Cairo over the past 10 days that um Egyptian mediators Qatari mediators and American mediators Israeli negotiators were not there and Israel now says this wasn’t the deal they proposed originally however they are sending or have already sent in fact a negotiating team to Cairo and they say this military pressure will go hand inand but there an enormous pressure here inside Israel uh for for Israeli leaders to to get a deal in place that frees the hostages uh it’s now seven months to the day since the October 7th attacks and the symbolism of that is not lost on people and the fact that Israeli hostages have spent so long under the ground in Gaza the fact that this war is so tiring for Palestinian civilians for Israeli civilians displaced North and South in this country for Lebanese civilians displaced in the south of Lebanon I think there’s a feeling that um the time is up for the hostages and for the civilian populations and I guess also a feeling that I’m hearing more and more from the hostage families that they don’t necessarily trust the prime minister to be acting in the best interests of the hostages of their families uh and of the nation you know that his own political interests come into it as well so all of those things in this mix today h and an ongoing Israeli smaller targeted military operation uh in the Philadelphia Corridor near the Gaza Street Eris macka reporting live there from Jerusalem thank

“The most significant part of Rafah from an Israeli military point of view and from Hamas’s point of view too, is what is called the Philadelphia Corridor”, said FRANCE 24’s correspondent in Jerusalem Irris Makler. “That is the corridor at the side between Egypt and Gaza [ . . .], the area from which Hamas was smuggling goods and military equipment from Egypt into Gaza.”
#Gaza #Rafah #Israel

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