Would Israel give up control of the main communication route that resupplies Hamas? The White House seems to have told David Ignatius that Benjamin Netanyahu's considering it in order to get a hostage deal complete The Israelis scoff at the notion. The Arabs still haven't heard from Hamas, and once again, no one can read the field even with a scorecard.

About the only point of agreement from yesterdays events -- Netanyahu spoke with both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. The two co-presidents did press Netanyahu for more concessions. And that's all that is undisputed:

During the call, Biden “stressed the urgency of bringing the ceasefire and hostage release deal to closure and discussed upcoming talks in Cairo to remove any remaining obstacle,” the White House said in a readout of the conversation.

The two leaders also “discussed active and ongoing US efforts to support Israel’s defense against all threats from Iran, including its proxy terrorist groups Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, to include ongoing defensive US military deployments,” the brief US readout added.

Ignatius, a Washington Post columnist with close ties to the administration, hears that Netanyahu may be willing to back off his demands for Israeli control of both Philadelphi and Netzarim Corridors. The Philadelphi Corridor runs between Rafah and the Egyptian border, where the IDF has found and neutralized more than 150 tunnels used for arms smuggling. Netanyahu had demanded control over that area in order to put an end to Hamas' lines of communication and to end the threat of their rebuilding, but Ignatius seems to hint that Biden talked him out of it:

The other vexing problem facing U.S. mediators is that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been slow-walking the negotiations. On Wednesday, U.S. officials credited Netanyahu for offering some concessions in a phone call with Biden, including a map showing where Israel proposes to deploy forces in the “Philadelphi Corridor” along the Egypt-Gaza border.

But Netanyahu still talks of an “absolute victory” over Hamas that his military commanders say is unrealistic. And he has been fixated on the corridor, insisting it’s not one of the “densely populated” areas of Gaza that Israel agreed to leave. But during a visit to the corridor Wednesday, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant seemed to downplay the threat there. He told Israeli troops that the Rafah Brigade, Hamas’s last remaining fighting force in southern Gaza, had been “defeated,” according to his spokesman.

First off, let's point out that Netanyahu is at least negotiating. Hamas refused to engage in the latest negotiation, which goes beyond "slow-walking" to "not showing up to talk at all." It has been Hamas that keeps shifting its positions on swapping formulas, while refusing to budge on demanding an Israeli withdrawal up front -- in a war Hamas started. This sounds a lot like blaming the Czechs for not being willing to give up the Sudetenland fast enough. For what it's worth, I doubt that this is Ignatius' own formulation, but what the White House is telling him.

It didn't take the Israelis long to deny that Netanyahu has changed his position on Philadelphi:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not changed his position on maintaining military control over the Philadelphi Corridor, an unnamed diplomatic source in the Prime Minister’s Office says.

The source denies a claim by US officials who told The Washington Post that Netanyahu offered certain concessions on the matter in a call with US President Joe Biden yesterday.

And why would they? The Israelis have fought Hamas for almost eleven months after the October 7 massacres demonstrated conclusively that Hamas has no intention of peacefully co-existing with Israel. The only way to end that threat is to destroy Hamas so conclusively that even its ideology gets discredited. That, by the way, was the US policy in Germany and Japan in World War II, and it worked. You don't fight this long and take this amount of losses just to let the genocidal lunatics off the mat to try annihilation again later. 

That's why Netanyahu talks about "absolute victory." There's no living with Hamas, who has yet to honor a cease-fire agreement in their 18+ years of running Gaza. Hamas and Israel had operated under a Biden/Blinken cease-fire reached in 2021 as late as October 6, don't forget, and Hamas had also spent that entire time firing rockets into Israeli civilian centers. Hostages are -- or at least should be -- a secondary consideration to national survival. If Hamas wants an end to this war, then they have the same options Germany and Japan did in 1945: unconditional capitulation, with perhaps a concession on exile. 

Frankly, this sounds more like Biden administration spin rinsed through Ignatius than it does reality. They have defaulted to a hostile position with Netanyahu ever since this conflict began, demanding unilateral concessions and playing footsie with Hamas supporters in the US. Biden and Harris want to make Netanyahu the villain for fighting terrorists bent on the destruction of Israel, a strategy that worked in 2021 and in 2014 during Barack Obama's administration -- which is what led to October 7. And Netanyahu is done playing that game.

Update: The Jerusalem Post editorial board endorses Netanyahu's firm red line on Philadelphi:

Evacuating the corridor or relying on the Egyptians or technological solutions to prevent its use as a superhighway for smuggling weapons into Gaza would be a colossal mistake, a mistake the country has already committed once. Netanyahu is correct to define this as a red line. ...

Some members of the security establishment argued that, despite Israel’s full withdrawal from Gaza in August 2005, it should hold on to the corridor to prevent the smuggling of arms and terrorists into Gaza, but then-prime minister Ariel Sharon overruled them.

Sharon argued that maintaining a military presence there was becoming more of a security liability than an asset, as soldiers patrolling the corridor were easy targets for Palestinian terrorists. He also said that keeping soldiers there would be a constant source of friction that could destabilize the region.

Sharon further claimed that only by removing the Israeli presence from the corridor could Israel say – and have the international community recognize – that it had fully withdrawn from Gaza.

That decision has proven disastrous.

And it didn't even succeed as Sharon thought. No one gave credit to Israel for ending the occupation of Gaza; news coverage to this day still refers to it as a continuous reality. Israel got no benefit from withdrawal, not even credit for pulling out and forcing 8,000 Israelis to abandon their settlements in the territory. 

Netanyahu has made Philadelphi a red line for a reason.