Egypt Has a New Proposal

What is to be done with the estimated 200 Hamas fighters now behind the Yellow Line? Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has said they should not be allowed to give up their weapons and move to the western side of that line, where Hamas still rules. He fears that once in that part of Gaza still under the control of Hamas, they will simply be handed new weapons by the terror group. He worries that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, under terrific pressure from the Americans, will submit and allow those 200 Hamas combatants to leave the IDF-controlled area, unharmed, after surrendering their weapons, and then move to the Hamas-controlled area in western Gaza, be re-armed, and made ready to again fight the Zionist enemy.

Now the Egyptians have come up with a way to sweeten the pot for Israel. It wants the 200 Hamas men hiding in the Rafah area, behind the Yellow Line, to be released after they have not only surrendered their weapons, but also after they have shown the IDF where the tunnels are located in eastern Gaza. More on Cairo’s suggestion can be found here: “Egypt’s proposal for holed-up Hamas terrorists: Hand over weapons, locate Rafah tunnels to exit,” Reuters, November 6, 2025:

Hamas terrorists holed up in the Israeli-held Rafah area of Gaza would surrender their arms in exchange for passage to other areas of the enclave under a proposal to resolve an issue seen as a risk to the month-old truce, according to two sources familiar with the talks.

Egyptian mediators have proposed that, in exchange for safe passage, fighters still in Rafah surrender their arms to Egypt and give details of tunnels there so they can be destroyed, one of the sources, an Egyptian security official, said.

Israel and Hamas have yet to accept mediators’ proposals, the two sources said. A third confirmed that talks on the issue were underway.

Since the US-brokered ceasefire took effect in Gaza on October 10, the Rafah area has been the scene of at least two attacks on Israeli forces which Israel has blamed on Hamas; the terrorist group has denied responsibility.

The Prime Minister’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the accounts; Hazem Qassem, a Hamas spokesperson in Gaza, declined to comment.

Two of the sources said the Hamas fighters in Rafah, which the group’s armed wing has said have been out of contact since March, might be unaware that a ceasefire was in place. One of them added that getting the fighters out served the interest of safeguarding the truce.

The sources did not say how many Hamas terrorists might be holed up in the Rafah area.

The ceasefire is the first part of President Donald Trump’s plan to end the Gaza war.

The terrorist group has released the last 20 living hostages seized in the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners; Israeli troops have withdrawn from western areas of Gaza, where Hamas remains in control….

However, Hamas has violated Phase One of the Trump Plan. It had committed itself to handing over the 28 dead hostages within 72 hours; instead, it has been a month since the ceasefire began, and Hamas has now released only 22 of the 28 dead Israelis it is known to have been holding. Its excuse is that it “takes time” to locate and extract all the bodies under the rubble. It has been releasing them with excruciating slowness, one or two at a time every few days, and trying to deceive the Israelis, too, by releasing the bodies of Palestinians that Hamas claimed were Jews. Of the last six dead Israelis still in Gaza, the Israeli government believes that Hamas knows exactly where they are but is holding onto them as a bargaining chip.

None of the plans being laid for a new regime in Gaza, based on the notion that Hamas will be out as the ruler of the Strip and in its place, a group of Arab technocrats will take over, has yet been accepted. Hamas is adamant that it will not completely disarm, as it is required to do under the Trump Plan. Israel wants to make sure that neither Turkey or Qatar, both supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood and of Hamas, which is an offshoot of the Brotherhood, will have any part in the postwar government in Gaza.

The Egyptian proposal must not be reflexively dismissed. Destruction of the tunnel network under Gaza is one of the IDF’s most important tasks. It has been tremendously difficult to destroy 40% of the tunnels so far. The IDF will have to weigh the harm that could be done by freeing the 200 terrorists inside the Yellow Line, transferring them from eastern to western Gaza, across the Yellow Line, to rejoin the made body of Hamas terrorists, against the military benefit to Israel that could result if more of the tunnels could be swiftly located and blown up, before Israel is pressured into pulling its troops out of Gaza altogether. It’s a difficult decision. What is more important for Israel right now: to get rid of many more Hamas tunnels, or to rid itself, by killing or capturing, 200 more Hamas combatants now inside the Yellow Line. Only the IDF possesses the information to make that decision.