CAIRO (AP) — Palestinians and aid workers are eagerly awaiting the reopening of the Rafah border crossing, which is the Gaza Strip’s lifeline for food and other aid and its only gateway to the outside world that wasn’t controlled by Israel before the war.
The crossing between Gaza and Egypt will probably reopen Sunday, Israel’s foreign minister said Thursday, though it wasn’t clear if it will be opened for both aid deliveries and the flow of people into and out of the territory.
With much of Gaza turned to rubble and gripped by famine, it needs a massive influx of fuel, food, medicine and tents. United Nations aid chief Tom Fletcher said Thursday that he was headed to the crossing and hoped to see the route “full of trucks, as part of a massive surge of aid following the peace deal.”
Here’s why the crossing is so vital.
A ‘lifeline’ for Gaza
Before the war, Rafah bustled with goods and people passing to and from Egypt and Gaza, which is home to roughly 2.3 million Palestinians. Although Gaza has four other border crossings, they are shared with Israel, and only Rafah links the territory with another neighboring country.
After Hamas-led militants invaded southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing roughly 1,200 people and taking 251 others hostage, Egypt tightened its restrictions on traffic through the Rafah crossing. After Israel took control of the Gaza side in May 2024 as part of its offensive that has killed more than 67,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry, it closed the crossing except to the occasional medical evacuation.
A reopened Rafah crossing would make it easier for Gazans to seek medical treatment, travel internationally or visit family in Egypt, which is home to tens of thousands of Palestinians. It would also help Gaza’s devastated economy, as Palestinian-made olive oil and other l products are widely sold in Egypt and throughout the Arab world.
Closing the crossing was “breaking the backbone that many families relied on as a lifeline,” said Adel Amr, who works in the transport sector based in the West Bank and has been trying to organize aid shipments into Gaza.
“The crossing is a lifeline for our families in Gaza. This was the only safe route for those who wanted to travel from the Gaza Strip to the outside world,” he said.
What comes next?
On Wednesday, 400 truckloads of aid passed through the Egyptian side on their way into Gaza and headed through a buffer zone toward an Israeli-controlled crossing a few kilometers (miles) away. It’s unclear, though, if the aid made it through the Israeli security inspection and to those who desperately need it, though the World Food Program said some of its trucks have been getting through.
The Gaza side of the Rafah crossing was heavily damaged during the war, and it’s unknown if repairs are underway. Once it does reopen — perhaps as early as Sunday — Israel has agreed to stick to the humanitarian terms put in place for a January 2025 ceasefire, including allowing a certain number of truckloads of aid per day into Gaza.
With the ceasefire deal calling for Hamas to have no role in running Gaza, it’s unclear who will operate the territory’s side of the Rafah crossing once the war ends.
Whoever it is, the crossing “should be run completely by Palestinians,” with some help from the U.N. or the European Union, said Sami al-Arian, a public affairs professor at Istanbul Zaim University who runs the Center for Islam and Global Affairs.
The EU said this week that it is ready to redeploy a longstanding humanitarian mission to the Rafah crossing if and when it is safe to do so.
“This is a Palestinian town — a Palestinian city. And Palestinians should mainly comprise the majority of the people coming in and out (of Rafah),” al-Arian said, adding that he thinks Israel should have “no veto power” over the entry of aid and goods and the flow of Palestinians through the crossing.
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Associated Press reporters Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel, and Sam McNeil in Brussels contributed to this report.
