Israel says Gaza’s Rafah crossing ready to resume operations on Monday | News

Israel has said it will open the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt in a limited “pilot phase” on Monday, as thousands of sick and wounded Palestinians wait for urgent medical care abroad.

COGAT, the Israeli military agency that controls aid to Gaza, said on Sunday that the crossing will reopen in both directions for Gaza residents on foot only, and that its operation will be coordinated with Egypt ‍and the European Union.

“Today, a pilot is underway to test and assess the operation of the crossing,” the agency said in a statement. “The movement of residents in both directions, entry and exit to and from Gaza, is expected to begin tomorrow.”

The Israeli army said it has completed a complex that will serve as a screening facility for Palestinians passing in and out of Gaza through the crossing.

Rafah is the only border crossing in Gaza that does not pass through Israel, and it was jointly managed by Palestinian and Egyptian authorities, in coordination with Israel, before the war.

But it has been largely shut for nearly two years after Israeli forces seized it in May 2024, during the country’s genocidal war on Gaza.

Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Khan Younis in southern Gaza, said the crossing’s reopening was an “uncomfortable dynamic”.

“Palestinians want to leave, but at the same time, they’re worried they won’t be able to come back,” he said. “People said the purpose for them departing would strictly be for medical evacuation or continuing their education, and they want to come back later on.”

Ismail al-Thawabta, the director of Gaza’s Government Media Office, told Al Jazeera that about 80,000 Palestinians who left Gaza during Israel’s war are seeking to return.

An estimated 22,000 wounded and sick people are also “in dire need” of leaving Gaza for treatment abroad, he added.

‘We don’t know what to do’

Two Egyptian officials told the Reuters news agency that at least 50 Palestinian patients will be processed on Sunday to cross into Egypt for treatment.

In the first few days, approximately 200 people, patients and their family members, will transit ‌daily into Egypt through the crossing, the officials said, with 50 people returning to Gaza per day.

Lists of Palestinians set to pass through the crossing have been submitted by Egypt and approved by Israel, Reuters reported.

Video footage by the AFP news agency showed ambulances lined up on the Egyptian side of the border, preparing to receive medical evacuees.

Among those seeking medical care abroad was 65-year-old Abed El Halim Abo Askar, who has been battling cancer for four years. Abo Askar was scheduled to have an operation on October 10, 2023, but the war began just days before that, postponing his urgently needed treatment.

Abo Askar’s 28-year-old daughter, Shaima, was killed in the first month of the war, along with her husband and two daughters, in an Israeli air attack in Gaza City.

His son, Ahmed, told Al Jazeera his father has been waiting for two years and four months and has very little hope of obtaining the care he needs at the moment.

“Every day they say they would open the crossing, be patient. But nothing has happened since the start of the war,” he said. “My father needs to do the operation, and we don’t know what to do… Medicines are not available at all, and [there is] no capacity to do investigations because Israel destroyed all the hospitals.”

Israeli attacks continue

Reopening ‌the border crossing was a key requirement of the first phase of United States President Donald Trump’s ⁠”ceasefire” to end Israel’s genocidal war. But the “truce”, which came into effect in October after two years of fighting, has been repeatedly shaken by rounds of violence.

Israeli forces carried out more attacks across Gaza on Sunday, killing at least three people, according to medical sources.

A source at the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis said an Israeli drone attack killed one person in the northwest of Rafah city, with Palestinian media outlets identifying the victim as 63-year-old Khaled Hammad Ahmed Dahleez.

Another Palestinian was killed in a drone attack in the central Wadi Gaza area.

The attacks came after at least 31 people were killed on Saturday in multiple Israeli air raids on northern and southern Gaza.

Israeli forces have killed at least 511 Palestinians, and wounded 1,405, since the start of the “ceasefire”.

Israel to ban MSF

The Israeli government dealt another blow to the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza, announcing on Sunday that it will terminate the humanitarian operations of Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym MSF, in the besieged Palestinian territory after it failed to provide a list of its Palestinian staff.

The decision followed “MSF’s failure to submit lists of local employees, a requirement applicable to all humanitarian organisations operating in the region”, Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism said.

In December, Israel announced it would prevent 37 aid organisations, including MSF, from working in Gaza from March 1 for failing to submit detailed information about their Palestinian employees, drawing widespread condemnation from NGOs and the United Nations.

Israel’s decision to terminate MSF’s operations in Gaza “is an extension of Israel’s systematic weaponisation and instrumentalisation of aid”, James Smith, an emergency doctor based in London, told Al Jazeera.

“Israel has systematically targeted the Palestinian healthcare system, killing more than 1,700 Palestinian healthcare workers”, thereby “creating a profound dependency on international organisations”, Smith said.