Bret Stephens, a columnist for the New York Times who is a critic of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, says that the Israeli leader is right that a hostage deal requiring a withdrawal from the Gaza-Egypt border is a “poison pill.”
As Breitbart News reported earlier this week, Netanyahu delivered a press conference in which he explained that Israeli control of the so-called “Philadelphi Corridor” along the Gaza-Egypt border was needed to prevent Hamas from smuggling weapons back into the Gaza Strip and rearming itself for future terror attacks on Israel. Critics — including defense minister Yoav Gallant — disagreed, arguing that Israel and retake the corridor later if needed.
Stephens, a former editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post, argues that Netanyahu is right — and that while it is an urgent priority to reach a deal that will free the remaining hostages, that should not be achieved at the cost of guaranteeing future terror and hostage-taking:
Netanyahu is right, and it’s important for his usual critics, including me, to acknowledge it.
He’s right, first because the highest justification for fighting a war, besides survival, is to prevent its repetition. Israel has lost hundreds of soldiers to defeat Hamas. Thousands of innocent Palestinians have died and hundreds of thousands have suffered, because Hamas has held every Gazan hostage to its fanatical aims. Hamas was able to initiate and fight this war only because of a secure line of logistical supply under its border with Egypt.
Israel’s control of the Philadelphi Corridor largely stops this. To relinquish it now, for any reason, forsakes what Israel has been fighting for, consigns Palestinians to further misery under Hamas and all but guarantees that a similar war will eventually be fought again. Why do that?
Netanyahu’s critics say that Israel has already offered to withdraw from some or all of the Philadelphi Corridor in earlier negotiations, but Netanyahu has countered that such offers, if made by negotiators, were never ratified.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of “”The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days,” available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of “The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency,” now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
