For all the focus on an Israel-Hamas deal to reach a ceasefire, not enough attention gets paid to a powerful and essential third party: Egypt.
Israel needs to police Egypt’s border with Gaza, the so-called Philadelphi Corridor; otherwise, an endless flow of weapons, money and even fighters could trickle across to keep Hamas in business.
To say nothing of the fact that a permeable Egypt border could serve as a path to boltholes for the remaining Hamas leadership, including noted coward Yahya Sinwar.
The trouble is, Israel plainly can’t trust Egypt to do that policing and so demands as part of any deal the right to keep troops stationed there.
And Cario has made a huge sticking point of the issue, refusing to even let Israel set up observation towers to keep an eye on the border.
And anyone calling Israel’s demand unreasonable is arguing in bad faith.
The IDF in May discovered 20 Hamas tunnels adjacent to the corridor; per Israeli military intelligence, these conveyed weapons and materiel to the terrorist killers of Hamas.
They were built and used right under the noses of Egyptian authorities, in other words.
The discovery confirmed literal years of warning from the Israeli security establishment that this was going on.
So Cairo either can’t or won’t do anything to actually stem the flow of help to Sinwar and his band of sociopathic killers.
And given the scale of operation, won’t seems far more likely.
Which creates yet more evidence that the Biden administration’s push for a deal at any cost has nothing to do with regional security, and certainly nothing to do with concern for Israel’s security.
No: It’s a clear rush to cement some legacy for Joe, whose foreign-policy record consists to date of disaster after disaster.
And the cost to our most trusted regional ally be damned.