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How a narrow strip of scrubland has become an obstacle to a ceasefire in Gaza

How a narrow strip of scrubland has become an obstacle to a ceasefire in Gaza
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu points at a map of the Gaza Strip during a press conference in Jerusalem on Sept. 4, 2024. (POOL/AFP)
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Updated 05 September 2024

How a narrow strip of scrubland has become an obstacle to a ceasefire in Gaza

How a narrow strip of scrubland has become an obstacle to a ceasefire in Gaza
  • The Philadelphi corridor is a strip that runs the 14-km length of the Gaza side of the border with Egypt
  • Israel says Hamas used a vast network of tunnels beneath the border to import weapons
  • Egypt says it destroyed tunnels on its side and set up a buffer zone that prevents smuggling

A narrow strip of scrubland and sand dunes on the Gaza side of the border with Egypt has emerged as a major obstacle in talks aimed at halting the Israel-Hamas war and freeing scores of hostages.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel must maintain control over the so-called Philadelphi corridor to prevent Hamas from replenishing its arsenal through a network of smuggling tunnels in the area. He says that’s necessary to ensure the group can never again launch an attack into Israel like the one on Oct. 7 that ignited the war.
But many Israelis, including the defense minister, say Israel should relinquish the corridor, at least for a short period of time, in order to secure an agreement to bring back around 100 hostages still held in Gaza, about a third of whom are believed to be dead.
The debate reached a fever pitch this weekend after Israel recovered the bodies of six hostages that the military says Hamas killed as troops closed in. Critics say they could have been returned alive in a ceasefire deal and accuse Netanyahu of sabotaging the talks for his own political interests.
Hamas has demanded a full withdrawal from Gaza and says Netanyahu only raised the demand for the Philadelphi corridor in recent weeks to derail the talks.

Netanyahu blames Hamas for the lack of a deal and says the demand is not new.
Egypt, which has served as a key mediator, is also opposed to any Israeli presence along the Gaza side of its border and says it would threaten the decades-old peace treaty between the two countries, a cornerstone of regional stability.
What is the Philadelphi corridor and why does Israel want it?
The Philadelphi corridor is a strip — only 100 meters (yards) wide in some places— that runs the 14-kilometer (8.6-mile) length of the Gaza side of the border with Egypt. It includes the Rafah crossing, which was Gaza’s only outlet to the outside world not controlled by Israel until the army captured the entire corridor in May.
Israel says Hamas used a vast network of tunnels beneath the border to import arms, allowing it to build up the military machine it deployed on Oct. 7. The military says it has found and destroyed dozens of tunnels since seizing the corridor.
At a news conference on Monday, Netanyahu pointed to a map of the region depicting weapons flowing into Gaza from across the border, saying the corridor provided “oxygen” for Hamas.
Egypt released a statement Tuesday rejecting Netanyahu’s allegations, saying they misled the Israeli public and obstructed ceasefire efforts. Egypt says it destroyed hundreds of tunnels on its side of the border years ago and set up a military buffer zone of its own that prevents smuggling.
What do Netanyahu’s critics say about the corridor?
For weeks, Israeli media have quoted unnamed security officials lambasting Netanyahu, saying the corridor is not essential to Israel’s security and should not hold up a deal to return hostages. Some have suggested an international force could patrol the border, perhaps with remote Israeli sensors.
The dispute sparked a shouting match at a security Cabinet meeting last week, in which Defense Minister Yoav Gallant accused Netanyahu of favoring border arrangements over the lives of the hostages, according to an Israeli official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door meeting. Gallant was the lone dissenting voice in a subsequent vote in favor of maintaining control over the Philadelphi corridor and has since called on the government to reverse it.




Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu giving a press conference in Jerusalem on Sept. 4, 2024. (POOL/AFP)

Families of hostages have led months of mass protests calling on Netanyahu to make a deal with Hamas to return their loved ones. The biggest demonstrations yet erupted over the weekend after the killing of the six hostages, including Israeli-American Hersh Goldberg-Polin, one of the best-known captives.
Netanyahu’s supporters say that conceding the Philadelphi corridor now would reward Hamas for killing the captives. They maintain that only relentless military pressure can defeat Hamas, return the hostages and bring about a deal that ensures Israel’s long-term security.
What do Palestinians say about the corridor?
Any Israeli presence inside Gaza would be widely seen as a military occupation, likely prolonging the conflict.
It could also extend, perhaps indefinitely, the closure of the Rafah crossing, which has been a lifeline for Gaza since Egypt and Israel began imposing various degrees of a blockade on the territory after Hamas seized power from rival Palestinian forces in 2007.
For 16 years, it was the only way for most Palestinians to exit or enter Gaza. During the first seven months of the war, it was also the only route available for medical evacuations and the main entry point for desperately needed humanitarian aid.
Israel captured Gaza, the West Bank and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war, territories the Palestinians want for their own state. It withdrew soldiers and settlers from Gaza in 2005 but continued to control the territory’s airspace, coastline, and all of its border crossings except Rafah.
Hamas has adamantly rejected any Israeli presence in Gaza, including in the Philadelphi corridor and the Netzarim corridor, a buffer zone carved out by Israel separating northern from southern Gaza. Israel says it needs that corridor to search Palestinians returning to their homes in the north to keep militants from slipping in.
Israel denies its demands regarding the two corridors are new, referring to them as “clarifications” of an earlier proposal endorsed by President Joe Biden in a May 31 speech and by the UN Security Council.
Israel also accuses Hamas of making unacceptable demands since then, and says the militant group is hindering a deal, including by killing hostages who would be part of it.
What is the position of the mediators?
Biden’s speech and the Security Council resolution referred to a complete Israeli withdrawal. Egyptian officials and Hamas say the demands regarding the corridors were not included in subsequent versions of the US-backed proposal, including one that Hamas said it accepted in early July.
Egypt is deeply opposed to any Israeli military presence along the Gaza border and has refused to reopen its side of the Rafah crossing unless the Gaza side is returned to Palestinian control.
It has accused Israel of violating annexes to the landmark 1979 peace treaty pertaining to Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from Gaza that regulate the deployment of forces along the border. Israeli officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The United States, which is providing crucial military support to Israel while also serving as a mediator, has not taken a position on the corridors, at least publicly, while Hamas has accused it of trying to impose Israel’s demands on the militant group.
Biden said Monday that Netanyahu was not doing enough to bring about a ceasefire, without elaborating.


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War crimes likely committed by both sides in Syria sectarian violence, UN commission says

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Updated 48 min ago

War crimes likely committed by both sides in Syria sectarian violence, UN commission says

War crimes likely committed by both sides in Syria sectarian violence, UN commission says
  • Some 1,400 people, mainly civilians, were reported killed during the violence that primarily targeted Alawi communities, and reports of violations continue, according to a report by the UN
GENEVA: War crimes were likely committed by both members of interim government forces and fighters loyal to Syria’s former rulers during a major outbreak of sectarian violence in Syria’s coastal areas that culminated in a series of March massacres, a UN team of investigators found in a report on Thursday.
Some 1,400 people, mainly civilians, were reported killed during the violence that primarily targeted Alawi communities, and reports of violations continue, according to a report by the UN Syria Commission of Inquiry.
The incidents in the coastal region were the worst violence to hit Syria since the fall of President Bashar Assad last year, prompting the interim government to name a fact-finding committee.

Gaza’s young musicians sing and play in the ruins of war

Gaza’s young musicians sing and play in the ruins of war
Updated 53 min 6 sec ago

Gaza’s young musicians sing and play in the ruins of war

Gaza’s young musicians sing and play in the ruins of war
  • The conservatory was founded in the West Bank and had been a cultural lifeline for Gaza ever since it opened a branch there 13 years ago, until Israel launched its war as a response to the Oct 7 attacks

GAZA CITY: A boy’s lilting song filled the tent in Gaza City, above an instrumental melody and backing singers’ quiet harmonies, soft music that floated into streets these days more attuned to the deadly beat of bombs and bullets.
The young students were taking part in a lesson given on August 4 by teachers from the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music, who have continued classes from displacement camps and shattered buildings even after Israel’s bombardments forced them to abandon the school’s main building in the city.
“When I play I feel like I’m flying away,” said Rifan Al-Qassas, 15, who started learning the oud, an Arab lute, when she was nine. She hopes to one day play abroad.
“Music gives me hope and eases my fear,” she said.
Al-Qassas hopes to one day play abroad, she said during a weekend class at the heavily shelled Gaza College, a school in Gaza City. Israel’s military again pounded parts of the city on August 12, with more than 120 people killed over the past few days, Gazan health authorities say.
The conservatory was founded in the West Bank and had been a cultural lifeline for Gaza ever since it opened a branch there 13 years ago, teaching classical music along with popular genres, until Israel launched its war on the Mediterranean enclave in response to the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks.
Before the fighting, Israel sometimes granted the best students exit permits to travel outside Gaza to play in the Palestine Youth Orchestra, the conservatory’s touring ensemble. Others performed inside Gaza, giving concerts in both Arabic and Western traditions.
After 22 months of bombardment, some of the students are now dead, said Suhail Khoury, the conservatory’s president, including 14-year-old violinist Lubna Alyaan, killed along with her family early in the war.
The school’s old home lies in ruins, according to a video released in January by a teacher. Walls had collapsed and rooms were littered with debris. A grand piano had disappeared.
Reuters asked the Israeli military about the damage. The military declined to comment without more details, which Reuters could not establish.
During last week’s session, over a dozen students gathered under the tent’s rustling plastic sheets to practice on instruments carefully preserved through the war and to join together in song and music.
“No fig leaf will wither inside us,” the boy sang, a line from a popular lament about Palestinian loss through generations of displacement since the 1948 creation of Israel.
Three female students practiced the song Greensleeves on guitar outside the tent, while another group of boys were tapping out rhythms on Middle Eastern hand drums.
Few instruments have survived the fighting, said Fouad Khader, who coordinates the revived classes for the conservatory. Teachers have bought some from other displaced people for the students to use. But some of these have been smashed during bombardment, he said.
Instructors have experimented with making their own percussion instruments from empty cans and containers to train children, Khader said.

A BROAD SMILE
Early last year, Ahmed Abu Amsha, a guitar and violin teacher with a big beard and a broad smile, was among the first of the conservatory’s scattered teachers and students who began offering classes again, playing guitar in the evenings among the tents of displaced people in the south of Gaza, where much of the 2.1 million population had been forced to move by Israeli evacuation orders and bombing.
Then, after a ceasefire began in January, Abu Amsha, 43, was among the tens of thousands of people who moved back north to Gaza City, much of which has been flattened by Israeli bombing.
For the past six months, he has been living and working in the city’s central district, along with colleagues teaching oud, guitar, hand drums and the ney, a reed flute, to students able to reach them in the tents or shell-pocked buildings of Gaza College. They also go into kindergartens for sessions with small children.
Teachers are also offering music lessons in southern and central Gaza with 12 musicians and three singing tutors instructing nearly 600 students across the enclave in June, the conservatory said.
Abu Amsha said teachers and parents of students were currently “deeply concerned” about being uprooted again after the Israeli cabinet’s August 8 decision to take control of Gaza City. Israel has not said when it will launch the new offensive.

HUNGER AND FATIGUE
Outside the music teachers’ tent, Gaza City lay in a mass of crumbling concrete, nearly all residents crammed into shelters or camps with hardly any food, clean water or medical aid.
The students and teachers say they have to overcome their weakness from food shortages to attend the classes.
Britain, Canada, Australia and several of their European allies said on August 12 that “famine was unfolding before our eyes” in Gaza. Israel disputes malnutrition figures for the Hamas-run enclave.
Sarah Al-Suwairki, 20, said sometimes hunger and tiredness mean she cannot manage the short walk to her two music classes each week, but she loves learning the guitar.
“I love discovering new genres, but more specifically rock. I am very into rock,” she said.
Palestinian health authorities say Israel’s military campaign has killed more than 61,000 people, including more than 1,400 going to aid points to get food.
Israel says Hamas is responsible for the suffering after it started the war, the latest in decades of conflict, with the October 2023 attack from Gaza when its gunmen killed 1,200 people and seized 250 hostages according to Israeli tallies.

MUSIC THERAPY
In a surviving upstairs room at Gaza College, the walls pocked with shrapnel scars, the windows blown out, three girls and a boy sit for a guitar class.
Their teacher Mohammed Abu Mahadi, 32, said he thought music could help heal Gazans psychologically from the pain of bombardments, loss and shortages.
“What I do here is make children happy from music because it is one of the best ways for expressing feelings,” he said.
Elizabeth Coombes, who directs a music therapy program at Britain’s University of South Wales and has done research with Palestinians in the West Bank, also said the project could help young people deal with trauma and stress and strengthen their sense of belonging.
“For children who have been very badly traumatized or living in conflict zones, the properties of music itself can really help and support people,” she said.
Ismail Daoud, 45, who teaches the oud, said the war had stripped people of their creativity and imagination, their lives reduced to securing basics like food and water. Returning to art was an escape and a reminder of a larger humanity.
“The instrument represents the soul of the player, it represents his companion, his entity and his friend,” he said. “Music is a glimmer of hope that all our children and people hold onto in darkness,” he said.


Israel’s Smotrich approves settlement splitting East Jerusalem from West Bank

Israel’s Smotrich approves settlement splitting East Jerusalem from West Bank
Updated 55 min ago

Israel’s Smotrich approves settlement splitting East Jerusalem from West Bank

Israel’s Smotrich approves settlement splitting East Jerusalem from West Bank
  • Israel had frozen construction there since 2012 due to objections from the US, Europe, and other powers, who saw it as a threat to a future Palestinian peace deal

Israeli far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich approved plans overnight for a settlement that would split East Jerusalem from the occupied West Bank, a move his office said would bury the idea of a Palestinian state.
It was not immediately clear if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu backed the plan to revive the long-frozen E1 scheme, which Palestinians and world powers have said would lop the West Bank in two and will likely draw international ire.
In a statement headlined “Burying the idea of a Palestinian state,” Smotrich’s spokesperson said the minister would give a press conference later on Thursday about the plan to build 3,401 houses for Israeli settlers between an existing settlement in the West Bank and Jerusalem.
Israel had frozen construction plans there since 2012 because of objections from the United States, European allies and other world powers who considered the project a threat to any future peace deal with the Palestinians.