After having led, together with Qatar and the United States, the mediation effort that led to the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas announced this week, Egypt has intensified preparations to reopen the strategic Rafah border crossing that connects with the Strip. Gaza and will play a key role during the first phase of the agreement. This crossing, which has remained closed since the Israeli army occupied its Palestinian side in May, is expected to transit much of the humanitarian aid that Israel has agreed to allow into the Strip and will also be the place where it is expected to be delivered. carry out the delivery of hostages by Hamas.
The Rafah crossing should be reactivated as soon as the truce agreement comes into force, presumably on Sunday, and Egyptian security sources have assured local media that they are working to facilitate the delivery of as much humanitarian aid as possible to Gaza from the beginning. The priority, as expressed on Thursday in a press conference by the country’s Prime Minister, Mostafa Madbouly, is food, fuel and medical supplies, in order to begin to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in the Strip. Some information suggests that Israel will allow the entry of 600 aid trucks a day, from Israel and Egypt.
The Rafah border crossing, which until last May was the only one in Gaza that was not directly controlled by Israel, was key during the first three months of the war, at the end of 2023, since in that period it was the only place through which Basic supplies arrived in the Strip, despite not being a commercial crossing. As of January 2024, however, the majority of supplies that have entered Gaza have done so through crossings with Israel, which since it occupied Rafah in May has completely controlled humanitarian and commercial flows to the Palestinian enclave.
Since September, moreover, the volume of basic supplies, both humanitarian and commercial, entering the Strip has been by far the lowest since the war began, mainly due to the obstacles imposed by Israel and the chaos that has provoked its military offensive. Although the number of humanitarian trucks entering Gaza in November and December was slightly higher than the previous two months, when aid shipments bottomed out, only about 614 have arrived so far in January, according to UN data. a figure similar to what is expected to enter now in one day.
Beyond humanitarian aid, the agreement between Hamas and Israel contemplates that the Rafah crossing be prepared at the moment it comes into force to also make possible the handover of the hostages who remain in Gaza, initially those considered most vulnerable. , which include children, women and elderly or injured men. During the only other truce period since the start of the war, in November 2023, Hamas released about a hundred hostages who were handed over to the Egyptian authorities at the Rafah crossing.
In addition to the hostages, it is expected that Rafah could soon once again be the exit door for wounded or sick Palestinian civilians so that they can receive medical treatment outside Gaza, whose health system has been devastated by the Israeli army. Since the start of the war, more than 5,000 Gazans requiring health care they could not receive in the Strip have been evacuated, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), but almost all did so through Rafah before they were evacuated. will occupy Israel and there are thousands of people waiting.
border control
In parallel to the humanitarian issues related to the Rafah crossing, another important element on the negotiating table in recent weeks has been the future control of the narrow demilitarized corridor that extends along the border between Gaza and Egypt, called the Philadelphia corridor. or Saladin. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu even went so far as to derail a round of negotiations in September by claiming that Israel should retain its control, under the pretext that Hamas has used it to bring weapons and personnel into the Strip, an accusation for the which has not provided evidence to date and which Egypt denies.
The status of the corridor is also regulated by the 1979 peace agreement between Egypt and Israel, and its management has important implications for the security architecture of the area, the blockade on Gaza and the relevance of Egypt in the Palestinian issue. which made it a centerpiece of any agreement. The negotiations on this matter, in which the United States has also taken part, have followed a parallel course to the rest of the process that has taken place in recent weeks in Doha regarding the truce and the exchange of hostages.
According to the text of the agreement announced this week, the Israeli army must begin to gradually reduce the number of forces deployed in the Philadelphia corridor area already during the first phase. But it will not be until after the release of the last hostage included in the first phase of the agreement, which is scheduled to last 42 days, when Israeli troops will have to begin their final withdrawal from the axis, which they must complete no later than 50 days.
Late on Friday afternoon, Egyptian sources reported the formation in Cairo of a unit to monitor and coordinate the implementation of the agreement made up of representatives from Egypt, Qatar, the United States, Palestine and Israel. Cairo also expects to receive a delegation from the European Union in the coming days to discuss a possible return of civilian observers to the Rafah crossing to help manage the crossing, with the approval of Israeli and Palestinian authorities, similar to a Union operation that already worked there before Hamas took power in Gaza in 2007.
With an eye toward the future, and despite the fragility of the agreement between Hamas and Israel and doubts about whether this time it will be fulfilled to the end, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry called on Thursday for the international community not to only support the efforts humanitarian efforts in Gaza but also to begin mobilizing to define plans that pave the way for its future reconstruction. Cairo even announced that it is willing to organize a conference to facilitate this process, in which Egypt hopes that its companies will once again be able to benefit.
