Alwaght- Amid the regional and international pressure on Tel Aviv to act on the terms of the ceasefire in Gaza, the Israeli Defense Minister Yisrael Katz in a message announced the Gaza border with Egypt a "closed military zone", alleging drones are used in this region to smuggle arms to the coastal enclave.
On Thursday, Katz announced that he instructed the army to turn the border region with Egypt into a closed military zone to block arms supplies to Palestinian resistance groups fighting the Israeli occupation.
"Weapon smuggling using drones has become a feature of the Gaza conflict, serving to arm our adversaries. We must take all necessary measures to stop this," Katz added.
Israel and Egypt share a roughly 200-kilometer border. On Sunday, the Israeli military reported identifying a drone that crossed from the west into Israeli territory in an attempted weapons smuggling operation. The army said its forces intercepted and grounded the drone, which was carrying eight firearms.
In a separate incident on Tuesday, the occupation army announced it had blocked another smuggling attempt, intercepting a drone carrying ten handguns that had crossed the "eastern border" into Israel. Israel shares its eastern border with Jordan.
However, the new cabinet decision is not merely a reaction to a few weapon-carrying drones. The move pursues critical security, political, regional, and diplomatic objectives, observes argue.
1. Justifying continued blockade and pressure on Gaza
In the first place, the Israeli regime tries to justify its unceasing aggression on Gaza and so wants to continue its failed operations in Gaza under other pretext and prevent the Gazans from re-embracing calm once again.
Tel Aviv is pursuing the disarmament of Hamas and the transformation of Gaza into a demilitarized zone, an objective it failed to achieve through military means, despite the widespread destruction of the Strip's infrastructure. Now, in the political process of implementing a ceasefire agreement, the Israelis are seeking to accomplish this goal with the cooperation of the Americans and reactionary Arab governments. A central part of the Tel Aviv's strategy is to leverage the blockade as a tool to extract concessions from the resistance in this new phase. However, it is clear that the Israelis are using the pretext of weapons potentially reaching Hamas to justify their refusal to lift the siege and allow the large-scale entry of international humanitarian aid.
Corroborating this, the Gaza government's media office stated on Thursday that since the truce began, only 4,453 of the required 15,600 trucks, a mere 28 percent, have entered Gaza. The office reported: "The average number of trucks entering Gaza daily since the truce started is only 171, compared to the 600 trucks per day that are supposed to enter according to humanitarian protocol." It further added that Tel Aviv is preventing the entry of essential and nutritious items, including eggs, red meat, poultry, fish, vegetables, and dairy, while simultaneously permitting "nutritionally worthless" items like processed foods, chocolate, chips, and soft drinks.
The Israelis want to promote the message that truce is just an opportunity to Hamas and other resistance groups to re-arm and so justify its non-commitment to the full withdrawal from Gaza.
2. Pressuring Egypt and Jordan by highlighting border insecurity
By highlighting Egypt's and Jordan's inability or even what deliberate negligence in stopping weapons smuggling into Gaza, Tel Aviv is effectively developing a new narrative. This narrative frames Tel Aviv as no longer bound to fully adhere to bilateral treaties or international resolutions concerning the security control of the Rafah border and the Philadelphi Corridor. It allows Israel to claim that when Arab partners are unable or unwilling to fulfill their security obligations, Tel Aviv has the right to take unilateral action.
The Israeli regime has long been yearning for a broader control on Philadelphi Corridor in order to close the tunnels and smuggling ways and put further strains on Hamas in Gaza's south.
Based on this, the Israelis are working to legitimize an expanded military presence along the Sinai desert and the border with Jordan through these very smuggling allegations. The media propaganda campaign surrounding these incidents is designed to make the public and foreign actors accept that Egypt lacks sufficient control over the Sinai and that Israel has no choice but to assume direct oversight of the borders to prevent threats.
Consequently, what Tel Aviv is pursuing is the gradual transfer of control over movement at the Gaza-Egypt border, as well as sections of the Jordanian border, to its military. This means that movement in these areas will no longer be governed by joint arrangements or multilateral oversight but will instead fall under the direct control of the Israeli forces, a move that effectively voids the spirit of previous agreements and ushers the southern and eastern borders into a phase of unilateral management by Israel.
3. Making legal and military excuses to continue massacring of civilians
The announcement to "alter rules of engagement" in practice means creating a legal and military ground to continue killing of the civilians. Turning Egypt border into a closed military zone will allow Israel to open fire at any movement on the border under the slightest suspicion, deploy larger number of forces to the border, and use drones and fighter jets at a very close distance from Rafah and Sinal desert, which are de-militerized zones under 1967 ceasefire deal with Egypt, without accepting responsibility for civilian casualties. These changes practically expand the army's freedom of action in one of the most sensitive hot spots and pave the way for more aggressive, unchecked operations.
4. Sending political message to home and strengthening the far-right
This rhetoric also serves a key domestic purpose. By maintaining military pressure on Gaza, the government aims to placate far-right cabinet figures, like National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who are deeply dissatisfied with the ceasefire agreement.
The fact that Ben-Gvir was quick to praise the move is a significant signal. Ben-Gvir, a staunch opponent of the ceasefire and a military withdrawal from Gaza, welcomed the decision on X, stating that Katz had finally "realized that the smuggling there serves terrorist objectives."
For Netanyahu's government, this move sends several messages:
- It projects security authority to an Israeli public grappling with a crisis of confidence in its military after military losses. This crisis, compounded by a wave of reverse migration and widespread pessimism about the future, has severely shaken the regime's foundations.
- It plays into the internal power struggle within the Israeli right, where political figures are competing to prove who is tougher. With whispers of Netanyahu potentially calling an early election, this action is as much about electoral posturing and domestic politics as it is about military strategy.
Furthermore, Netanyahu cabinet is seeking push the Gaza war beyond a bilateral Israeli-Hamas war and paint it as a multi-layer regional conflict where external actors send arms to Hamas. This serves an aim to downplay Tel Aviv’s losses against Hamas over the past two years. In other words, Tel Aviv wants to say: War is not just with a blockaded movement. It is with a network.
Finally, it can be said that given the arrangements Israel is following in Rafah that serve Tel Aviv's aim to perpetuate its occupational presence and prevent moves aimed at assuaging the economic pressures or rebuilding the war-ravaged Palestinian region, the Sharm El-Sheikh agreement and Trump's peace initiative are largely being rendered obsolete.
