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CAIRO – That was it a week since the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt was effectively closed after Israeli airstrikes hit the main crossing for possible aid convoys and an escape route for people desperate to leave the besieged Palestinian territory.
As the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip worsens, hundreds of tons of aid remain stuck on the Egyptian side of the border crossing despite increasing international calls to provide aid to civilians in the Gaza Strip. Meanwhile, foreign passport holders are looking for a way out on the Palestinian side.
Questions and confusion remain as to why Rafah is still closed.
On Monday – following reports that Egypt, Israel and the United States had reached an agreement to reopen the border crossing – trucks filled with aid lined the street in Arish, Egypt’s closest city, while foreigners and dual nationals crowded the gates on the Palestinian side. However, Israel and Hamas denied that an agreement had been reached.
Marathon talks between U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war cabinet that lasted into the early hours of Tuesday resulted in no announcement of a deal – even as trucks carrying aid from Arish drove closer to the Rafah border crossing. The relief trucks later turned back.
Why is the Rafah border crossing so important?
The crossing between the southern edge of the Gaza Strip and Egypt’s northern Sinai region is the only route from the Gaza Strip that Israel does not control. Gaza has been under a blockade enforced by Israel and Egypt since 2007, when Hamas took control of the enclave.
In peacetime, the Rafah crossing serves as an important passage for Palestinians living outside the Gaza Strip to visit relatives there and for residents of the Strip to receive medical treatment in Egypt.
Egypt exercises strict control over the border and people wishing to cross the border must obtain permission from the Palestinian and Egyptian authorities. Northern Sinai, where Egypt has been fighting Islamist militants for a decade, is heavily militarized. Egypt has long feared that Gaza could spark instability.
After the surprise attack by Hamas militants on October 7, Israel continued its deadly airstrikes, bombing Gaza and closing the Rafah border crossing. (Video: Julie Yoon/The Washington Post)
On October 7, Gaza-based Hamas militants launched a multi-pronged attack on Israel, killing at least 5 people at least 1,400 Israelis. People and goods were able to pass through Rafah for several days. Rafah suspended operations on October 10 when Israeli retaliatory strikes damaged the crossing.
Thousands of Palestinians were injured or killed in Israel’s bombing raids on Gaza. Israel has also cut off supplies of food, fuel, electricity and water to the strip’s more than two million residents.
Drinking water is running low and the United Nations has sounded the alarm that disease could spread without adequate sanitation. Hospitals are overcrowded and running out of generators and supplies. An Israeli evacuation warning on Saturday urging 1.1 million residents of the northern Gaza Strip to move south ahead of an expected ground invasion has deepened the crisis, aid workers said.
“We are on the brink of the abyss in the Middle East,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres on Sunday.
The Rafah border crossing is officially controlled by Egypt and the Palestinian authorities in Gaza. But Israel controls the skies and continues to bomb the area. Around 80 people were killed in attacks on Rafah and the nearby town of Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip in the past 24 hours, the Hamas-run Interior Ministry wrote on Facebook on Tuesday afternoon local time.
“There is no authorization for the safe passage of the multitude of trucks and lorries that accumulate between Arish and the Rafah border crossing, waiting to enter in safe conditions,” Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry told the BBC on Tuesday.
But Egypt has its own political and security concerns and wants to prevent large numbers of Palestinians from entering Egypt. Authorities in Cairo have said they will not allow foreign nationals to enter Sinai unless there is a pause in hostilities to allow aid shipments to pass, Mustapha Bakri, a member of Egypt’s parliament, said. said the Egyptian newspaper al-Masry al-Youm.
Israeli officials said last week that no aid can enter the Gaza Strip until Israeli hostages held by Hamas are released. Israel is also concerned that weapons are being smuggled into Gaza via aid convoys. Over the weekend, officials discussed the possibility of setting up a screening mechanism that would allow Israelis to check goods entering Gaza, The Washington Post reported.
But for Egypt, deploying Israeli inspectors on its soil is a no-brainer.
Opening the Rafah crossing to humanitarian aid – and to foreigners, including Americans, seeking to leave Gaza – has been a central topic of discussion during Blinken’s turbulent Middle East trip in recent days.
U.S. diplomats are trying to monitor the Rafah border crossing, but Egyptian officials held them back, citing specific security threats, a State Department official told The Post on Monday, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive diplomatic matter.
Where are the negotiations?
After meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi in Cairo on Sunday, Blinken said that “Rafah will be opened” and that aid will “get to the people who need it.”
President Biden on Sunday named former Ambassador David Satterfield to lead the United States’ humanitarian efforts related to the conflict. Satterfield was sent to Egypt to help coordinate aid.
On Monday, the U.S. Embassy in Israel urged Americans in Gaza to move toward the border crossing amid reports it could be opened. But Israel and Hamas said they had not agreed to a temporary ceasefire to allow aid.
Martin Griffiths, the U.N. under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, was due to arrive in Cairo on Tuesday, followed by U.N. chief Guterres on Wednesday, to make the case for an urgent humanitarian corridor to Gaza.
“There’s a lot of blame to go around about who’s responsible, but at the end of the day, the people who are capable of making those decisions aren’t making those decisions right now,” said Richard Brennan, regional emergencies director for the World Health Organization’s Eastern Mediterranean office.
Karen DeYoung, Annabelle Timsit and John Hudson contributed to this report.