Eulogising his son Hersh, one of the six hostages killed by Hamas gunmen in a Rafah tunnel over the weekend, Jon Polin expressed the hope that maybe his son’s death would be the catalyst that brings an end to Israel’s ongoing hostage nightmare.
“We failed you, we all failed you,” he said as thousands of mourners stood in silence at a Jerusalem cemetery on Monday afternoon, weeping. “Maybe your death is the stone, the fuel, that will bring home the 101 other hostages.”
President Yitzhak Herzog, in his eulogy, expressed similar sentiments, urging the country’s decision-makers to “do everything possible, with determination and courage, to save those who can still be saved”, calling this “a supreme moral, Jewish, and human duty”.
But by Monday evening, any hopes that the deaths of the six hostages – who had survived almost 330 days in captivity since they were seized during the Hamas raids on southern Israel on October 7th – would lead to a dramatic change in policy, paving the way for a ceasefire, were dashed.
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Prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, in a televised news conference, made it clear that there would be no compromise on his demand that Israeli troops remain along the Philadelphi corridor, the 14km road on the Gaza-Egypt border after hostages were released.
Using a large map of Gaza to back up his argument, Mr Netanyahu explained the “strategic imperative” of maintaining control of the route, which Hamas has long used for smuggling weapons into Gaza, describing it as the Palestinian militant group’s “oxygen line”.
He said a withdrawal would mean Israel would not be able to achieve its war aims.
Netanyahu’s position contradicts that of defence minister Yoav Gallant and the senior echelons of Israel’s military and intelligence services who support a ceasefire and argue that the Israel Defence Forces could recapture the area in a matter of hours if need be.
They also note that Israel has already destroyed more than 80 per cent of Hamas’s tunnels in the Philadelphi corridor and that it could not possibly build new ones during the proposed 42-day initial ceasefire, when most of the living hostages would be due to be set free.
Military analysts also argue that the Rafah crossing is more important for Hamas arms smuggling from Egypt than the routes over and under the Philadelphi corridor. In addition, they say, even when Israel occupied Gaza, Hamas managed to build tunnels into Egypt and smuggle in weapons, including powerful bombs and anti-tank missiles.
Critics also point out that while Netanyahu has insisted the Philadelphi issue is a deal breaker, he barely mentioned it during the first eight months of the war.
Furthermore, critics argue, if the Philadelphi route is so critical, it begs the question why did Israel not capture it during the initial stages of the Gaza war or in the previous rounds of conflict with Hamas in Gaza.
Opposition leader Yair Lapid has argued the Philadelphi issue is a spin, claiming that Netanyahu’s only motivation is keeping his grip on power. The two far-right parties in Tel Aviv’s ruling coalition have threatened to quit the government if Israeli troops pull back from the corridor as part of a ceasefire deal.
“It isn’t the Philadelphi corridor that truly worries him, but the Ben Gvir-Smotrich axis,” Lapid said, referring to the two leaders of the far-right parties, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. “This is only his latest trick to prevent his coalition from falling apart. This is politics and politics only.”
Speaking after Netanyahu’s Monday night news conference, an unnamed source familiar with the ceasefire negotiations told CNN: “This guy torpedoed everything in one speech.”
For the Israeli hostages still alive in Gaza, this could mean the difference between life and death.
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