On Sept. 4, Benjamin Netanyahu called a press conference for foreign media in order to explain his stubborn insistence on keeping Israeli forces in Gaza’s Philadelphi Corridor, even at the expense of a hostage deal. To his well-worn claim that the Gaza-Egypt border has historically been “porous” to the smuggling of weapons, the prime minister attached a new argument: if the Israeli army is not in control of the area, Hamas could “easily smuggle hostages out … to the Sinai desert,” and from there to “Iran or … Yemen.” After that, he added, “they’re gone forever.”
The following day, the Jewish Chronicle, Britain’s oldest Jewish newspaper, published an exclusive report that brought Netanyahu’s hypothetical argument to life. It purported to reveal evidence from Israeli “intelligence sources” proving not only that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar intended to smuggle out the remaining hostages via the Philadelphi Corridor to Iran, but that Hamas’ surviving leaders in Gaza, including Sinwar himself, would be going with them. ….more
