Gaza’s 9 mile border with Egypt includes a buffer zone known in Israel as the Philadelphi corridor. Today Israel claimed it had gained tactical control over the corridor and located more than a dozen tunnels used to smuggle items into Gaza.
Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military spokesman, said the zone was “Hamas’s oxygen tube” and had been used by the Palestinian armed group for “smuggling munitions into Gazan territory on a regular basis.” He said that Hamas had also built tunnels near the Egyptian border, calculating that Israel would not dare strike so close to Egyptian territory.
Israeli officials have said seizing the narrow, roughly nine-mile-long area holds crucial importance for preventing Hamas from rearming itself through cross-border smuggling. “It must be in our hands; it must be closed,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel told reporters…
