Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich shot back at Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Sunday after the latter called for a retreat from the Philadelphi Corridor, a move that would entail a reversal of a decision the Security Cabinet took in an 8-1 vote on Thursday.
The ministers effectively approved several maps showing how Israel will preserve troop deployments along the corridor, previously Hamas’s main conduit for smuggling weapons to Gaza, through a vast network of tunnels.
The maps have reportedly been incorporated into the “bridging proposal” the U.S. put out two weeks ago that Jerusalem accepted but Hamas rejected.
Gallant, the sole dissenter in the Security Cabinet vote (National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir abstained), posted to X on Sunday his demand that the government retreat from its decision that the IDF will remain on Gaza’s border with Egypt border, after news broke that the army recovered the bodies of six hostages from a Hamas tunnel.
Terrorists killed the six captives to prevent their rescue shortly before the IDF reached them.
“Hamas murdered our hostages in cold blood precisely to make us surrender and accept its demands, and allow it to survive and restore its capabilities and attack Israel again as part of the Iranian extermination plan,” Smotrich replied to Gallant on X, in a post attached an image of the defense minister’s earlier submission.
“The Cabinet will not allow a surrender deal that would abandon Israel’s security, but will direct the IDF and the security establishment to exact heavier prices from Hamas and those who give it shelter and concealment, and will intensify the war until its destruction and the return of the hostages,” Smotrich said.
He called for the IDF to move units two kilometers (1.2 miles) into the Gaza Strip along the border fence and clear the ground in that area. “This is a territory that will never return to the Gazans,” he said.
“Reason and national responsibility” must take precedence in the government’s decision-making process even during emotionally trying times,” Smotrich said.
Gallant argued that leaving the Egypt-Gaza border is necessary as the return of the hostages is the top priority.
(Hamas has made an Israeli retreat from the border a condition for a hostages-for-ceasefire-and-terrorists-release deal. Israel argues that without IDF control over the border, weapons will stream into the Gaza Strip and Hamas will rebuild its terrorist infrastructure.)
