Israel has said it will open Gaza's Rafah border on Sunday, but only for "limited movement" of people approved by authorities, ending a months-long wait for thousands of Palestinians.
The crossing between the enclave and Egypt will open for "people only", the Israeli military said, suggesting aid lorries will continue to be blocked.
It said the only Palestinians allowed to return would be "residents who left Gaza during the course of the war", and only after security clearance by Israel.
Officials in Gaza say about 20,000 people are waiting to travel in the opposite direction and leave the territory for medical treatment abroad. The Palestinian side of the crossing has been under Israeli army control since May 2024.
The recovery of the body of the last remaining Israeli hostage in Gaza on Monday paved the way for the reopening of the border, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said last Sunday that Israel would do so when the search for Ran Gvili's remains was complete.
The crossing was supposed to have opened during the initial phase of US President Donald Trump's plan to end the war, under a ceasefire deal reached in October between Israel and Hamas.
The 20-point US peace plan had called for the crossing to open and aid to enter “without interference”, and its closure had been regarded as a key unfulfilled element of the deal.
Earlier this month Ali Shaath, the head of a transitional Palestinian committee backed by the US to temporarily administer Gaza, said the Rafah border would be opened in both directions.
Mr Shaath, head of the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, said the move meant “Gaza would be open to the world".
After his surprise announcement, another member of Mr Trump’s Board of Peace said an agreement had been reached “regarding the preparation for reopening of the Rafah crossing”.
The crossing lies at Gaza’s southern tip. It is also a lifeline for Gazans who, even before October 7, 2023, depended on at least 600 lorries of aid a day. This number has dwindled significantly during the two-year war, and despite the ceasefire mandating that aid returns to prewar figures, only an average of 144 lorries a day entered in November and 158 in December.
Aid workers are also coming under pressure from Israeli authorities to comply with a new registration process. The charity Doctors without Borders (MSF) said on Friday it will not share a list of Palestinian and foreign staff, due to a lack of "concrete assurances" for their safety.
"From the outset, MSF raised serious concerns about this request in a context where medical and humanitarian workers have been intimidated, arbitrarily detained, and attacked," it said in a statement. Fifteen 15 MSF colleagues had been killed since October 2023, it added.
Consequently, Israeli authorities announced in December that MSF's previous registration "had lapsed and was therefore expected to cease operations within 60 days".
It said Israeli authorities were forcing them into an "impossible choice – forced to choose between sharing this information about our staff or interrupting critical medical care."
Israeli authorities had last year announced that organisations seeking to provide aid to Gaza would be required to provide personal information about their staff.
