[1/3]People with Egyptian flags cheer next to a convoy of trucks carrying humanitarian aid for Palestinians from Egyptian NGOs as they wait for an agreement on the Rafah border crossing to enter Gaza, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas City. .. Acquire license rights Read more
CAIRO, Oct 15 (Portal) – U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Sunday that the Egyptian-controlled border crossing into Gaza would be reopened and the U.S. was working with Egypt, Israel and the United Nations to get aid through it.
Hundreds of tons of aid from several countries have been waiting for days in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula for an agreement on their safe delivery to Gaza and the evacuation of some foreign passport holders via the Rafah border crossing.
Egypt said it had stepped up diplomatic efforts to resolve the impasse.
“We have provided a lot of material support for the people of Gaza, Egypt has provided a lot, and Rafah is reopening,” Blinken told reporters in Cairo after a “very good conversation” with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
“We are setting up – with the United Nations, with Egypt, with Israel and with others – the mechanism to deliver the assistance and get it to the people who need it,” he added.
On Sunday, the United States named veteran diplomat David Satterfield as special Middle East humanitarian envoy to lead the U.S. response to the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.
Sisi told Blinken, who is on a Middle East trip, that Israel had responded disproportionately by launching its worst attacks ever in retaliation for a devastating Hamas incursion on October 7.
“The response went beyond the right to self-defense and led to collective punishment for 2.3 million people in Gaza,” Sisi said at a joint appearance.
He added that cooperation was necessary to combat extremism, but also that Jews had lived freely in the Middle East in the past.
“Perhaps there were targeted attacks in Europe… in other countries, but this did not happen in our Arab and Islamic countries,” he said.
Israeli bombings on the Gaza side of the Rafah border crossing into Egypt, the main crossing out of Gaza that is not controlled by Israel, have affected its functionality, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry told CNN on Saturday.
The United States urged its citizens in Gaza on Saturday to move closer to the border crossing if it were to open.
Shoukry added that if foreign nationals managed to cross the border, Egypt would help them travel home.
An earlier statement from Sisi’s office on Sunday, issued after a National Security Council meeting, said Egypt rejects any plan to expel Palestinians to the detriment of other countries and that Egypt’s own security is a red line.
Like other Arab states, it has said Palestinians should remain on their land and it is working to provide aid.
Sisi also suggested hosting a summit to discuss the crisis, according to the statement.
Eight planes loaded with aid from Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Tunisia and the World Health Organization have landed at Sinai’s Al Arish airport in recent days and a convoy of more than 100 trucks is waiting in the city for permission to enter Gaza, according to the Egyptian Red Crescent.
Reporting by Mohamed Waly, Omar Abdel Razek, Yusri Mohamed, Humeyra Pamuk, Hatem Maher and Ahmed Tolba; writing by Adam Makary, Nafisa Eltahir and Aidan Lewis; Edited by Louise Heavens, Hugh Lawson, Andrew Cawthorne and Giles Elgood
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