The following is an article I wrote for the American Foreign Policy Council. The original is available here on their website.
Israel’s nearly three week-long offensive against the Hamas terrorist organization in the Gaza Strip ended days before the inauguration of Barack Obama as president in Washington. Now, attention in the U.S. and Israeli governments turns to the thorny questions of how to create a durable ceasefire, keep Hamas isolated, and ensure that it cannot rearm. And, as policymakers in Washington are beginning to find out, doing so requires solving the issue of the smuggling tunnels that run from Egypt to Gaza.
More than 6,000 rockets and mortars have been fired from Gaza since Israel’s 2005 withdrawal - some 3,200 in the last year alone. During the previous six-month period of relative calm, Hamas improved its military capabilities by smuggling some 80 tons of weapons from Egypt, including longer-range Iranian-made rockets that brought ten percent of the Israeli population within striking distance. Israel has indicated that a return to that status quo will no longer be tolerable.
The problem lies in the 8.2-mile Philadelphi Corridor that separates Gaza from Egypt. Israel gave control of the area to Egypt after it withdrew from Gaza in 2005. But so far, Jerusalem and Cairo have not seen eye-to-eye on how to combat the smuggling problem. Israel’s request for the deployment of a multinational force to assist in detecting and destroying the tunnels was rejected by Cairo, which has said that it would never allow a foreign military presence on its sovereign territory. Egypt has countered by requesting that Israel allow it to increase the number of border policemen that it can deploy along the Philadelphi Corridor. Doing so, however, would require a reworking of the 1979 Camp David Accords, which currently limit the size of Egypt’s military deployment in the Sinai.
There is another way, however. Back in 2004, the Israeli army reportedly planned on digging a canal 49 to 82 feet deep to stop the smuggling. The plan, however, was preempted by Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon’s decision the following year to undertake a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. Washington has taken note of the possibility as well; in November 2007, the U.S. government dispatched Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Robert Danin and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Mark Kimmitt to Egypt, where they recommended constructing a canal along the border as a way of combatting illicit Palestinian arms trade. And today, the idea is reportedly again being discussed, this time in Cairo, as a potential solution to the smuggling problem.
As it begins thinking about how to secure a durable peace between Israel and the Palestinians, the Obama administration should consider giving this plan a push. After all, the difference between peace and renewed war may well lie in how Cairo deals with the tunnels. America can help Egypt build a bridge to the solution, but a river should run through it.