Egypt is growing increasingly angry over Israel's tactics to prevent Palestinians from returning to and leaving Gaza through the Rafah crossing as stipulated in US President Donald Trump's peace plan for the coastal enclave.
As many as 82,000 residents who left Gaza after the war broke out have registered with the Palestinian embassy in Cairo to return home, but fewer than 100 have made it through the crossing between Egypt and Gaza since it reopened on February 2, sources told The National on Monday.
This contravenes an agreement struck by Israel and Egypt that 50 patients would be allowed to leave Gaza, each accompanied by up to two companions, and 50 residents would be permitted to return home, each day. Moreover, Israel has not allowed sufficient humanitarian aid to enter Gaza as stipulated in Mr Trump's plan, the sources said.
“The crossing was essentially open for human traffic for three days since it was officially reopened on February 2,” said one of the sources. “Israel finds it terrifying that a large number of Palestinians want to return to Gaza despite the obvious hardships they will face there.”
The sources said Israel has repeatedly cited breaches by Hamas of the October 10 ceasefire as the reason for not allowing Palestinians in and out of Gaza.
Another reason, they explained, is that Israel's exhaustive security checks of Palestinians returning or leaving Gaza nearly always find them linked to Hamas, either through family relations or previous service in unarmed, paid or voluntary jobs, and they are consequently denied passage.
“Israel is using to its advantage the fact that Hamas has been and maybe will continue to be an integral part of Gaza's social fabric and accordingly deny Palestinians passage into or out of Gaza,” said the same source. “Almost every adult male or female in Gaza has a Hamas connection or is linked somehow to members of other militant groups.”
Israel also sometimes closes the crossing when it conducts military operations in nearby areas, citing safety concerns, and often orders it shut when its troops see activities on the Egyptian side of the border that they deem suspicious or provocative, the sources said. Israeli orders to shut the crossing are routinely passed to the EU mission that monitors it, according to the sources.
Israel captured the Gaza side of the crossing, as well as a strip of land along the territory's southern border with Egypt, in May 2024. The move angered Cairo and worsened the already fraught relations between Egypt and Israel, which have plunged to their lowest level as a result of the Gaza war. The two nations are bound by a 1979 US-sponsored peace that is widely considered a pillar of regional stability.
Egypt and fellow Gaza peace mediators Qatar and Turkey have repeatedly publicly condemned what they see as Israel's violations of the ceasefire and its failure to meet its commitments under Mr Trump's 20-point plan. They have also complained to the US.
Cairo's concern over Israel's commitment to the Trump plan has been compounded by the Israeli government's decision on Sunday to allow land registration in the occupied West Bank for the first time since it captured the area from Jordan in 1967, a move that Egypt and other Arab nations see as a prelude to the annexation of the Palestinian territory.
The first phase of Mr Trump's plan brought the release of all living and deceased hostages held by Hamas in exchange for hundreds of Palestinians detained in Israeli jails. Israeli troops also withdrew behind a “yellow line” that left them in control of more than half of Gaza.
The current phase should see Hamas disarmed, a further withdrawal of Israeli forces, the entry into Gaza of a UN-sanctioned technocratic Palestinian committee to run the enclave's day-to-day affairs in place of Hamas, and the deployment of an International Stabilisation Force to maintain security. Israel has to date denied the committee entry into Gaza.
A multinational “Board of Peace”, created under the plan to oversee the affairs of postwar Gaza, is expected to hold its first meeting in Washington on Thursday. Mr Trump said on Sunday that its members have pledged more than $5 billion for Gaza aid and reconstruction.
Board members have also committed “thousands of personnel to the International Stabilisation Force and local police to maintain security and peace for Gazans”, he said in a post on the Truth Social platform.
The UN has estimated that about $70 billion will be needed for the reconstruction of the Palestinian enclave, which has been mostly destroyed by two years of relentless Israeli strikes.
In another positive sign that plans to stabilise Gaza are moving ahead, Muslim-majority Indonesia said on Monday that it is preparing to send 1,000 troops to Gaza by early April as part of the stabilisation force, and will have 8,000 ready for deployment there by June.
The Gaza war was triggered by a Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023. The attackers killed about 1,200 people and took about 250 hostage. Israel retaliated with a devastating military campaign that has so far killed more than 72,000 Palestinians and injured more than twice that number.
Israel's military conduct in Gaza has drawn accusations of genocide and war crimes from the UN and international rights groups. Hamas also faces charges of war crimes for its attack, the victims of which included women and children. Both sides deny the charges.
