World

Egypt will open Rafah border crossing into Gaza permanently on Saturday

interns Contributor
Font Size:

Egypt’s decision Wednesday to end its blockade of Gaza by opening the only crossing to the Hamas-ruled Palestinian territory this weekend could ease the isolation of 1.4 million Palestinians there. It also puts the new Egyptian regime at odds with Israel, which insists on careful monitoring of people and goods entering Gaza for security reasons.

The Rafah crossing will be open permanently starting Saturday, Egypt’s official Middle East News Agency announced. That would provide Gaza Palestinians their first open border to the world in four years, since Egypt and Israel slammed their crossings shut after the Islamic militant Hamas overran the Gaza Strip in 2007.

During the closure, Egypt sometimes opened its border to allow Palestinians through for special reasons such as education or medical treatment. But with Israel severely restricting movement of Palestinians through its Erez crossing in northern Gaza, residents there were virtual prisoners.

MENA’s statement said the old rules will be reinstated, allowing Palestinians with passports to cross into Egypt every day from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. except for Fridays and holidays.

Entry into Gaza was more complicated. Palestinians ran their side of the crossing. European monitors had a role at the crossing, and they have been waiting to resume that function. Also, Israel was supposed to have a monitoring role from afar, theoretically to stop weapons and militants from entering Gaza.

Mohammed Awad, the Hamas minister of foreign affairs, said he “highly appreciates the decision by the Egyptian brothers to ease the process of travel at Rafah terminal. This reflects the deep relation between us and Egypt, and it will contribute to ease the lives of the Palestinians in Gaza.”

Col. Ayoub Abu Shaer, Gaza director of the Rafah terminal, said the two sides have been discussing the changes in recent weeks. Under the proposal, women would be able to leave Gaza without restrictions, while men between the ages of 18 and 40 would have to obtain visas for Egypt at the border.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor refused to comment.

The decision reflected a change in Egypt’s attitude toward Israel since the fall of President Hosni Mubarak in February.

The military council running the country until parliamentary and presidential elections is less concerned about its relations with Israel and has shown more interest in the Palestinians.

Last month, the Egyptian regime successfully brokered a reconciliation between Hamas and rival Fatah, which runs the West Bank government. The two had been at odds since the brief 2007 conflict, when Hamas expelled Fatah forces from Gaza. Repeated efforts by the previous Egyptian government to heal the rift failed.

MENA said the decision to open the Rafah crossing was part of efforts “to end the status of the Palestinian division and achieve national reconciliation.” Before the Gaza conflict, the Palestinian Authority under President Mahmoud Abbas ran the Palestinian side of the Gaza crossing, and Israel always objected to Hamas having a role there.

Egypt’s Foreign Minister Nabil Elaraby told the Arabic satellite channel Al-Jazeera last month that the closure of Rafah crossing was about to end, calling the decision to close it “a disgusting matter.”

Egypt was the first Arab nation to sign a peace treaty with Israel in 1979. There have been polls that indicate many Egyptians would favor canceling the treaty. But that subject is not high on the agenda of Egypt’s new rulers who are concerned with internal crises, including unemployment and weeding out corruption.

Besides trapping more than a million Palestinians in Gaza, the Rafah border closure has been largely ineffective.

Gazans have circumvented the blockade by operating hundreds of smuggling tunnels under the nine-mile Gaza-Egypt border. The tunnels have been used to bring in all manner of products, as well as people. Israel charges Hamas has used the tunnels to import weapons, including rockets that can reach main population centers in Israel’s center.

The tunnel industry is a semi-official Gaza enterprise, with Hamas collecting taxes on goods smuggled in.

Over the past year, the tunnels — and the blockade itself — have lessened in significance as Israel eased its import restrictions, banning weapons and materials it feels could be used for military purposes by Hamas, including many types of construction materials. Israel cut back on its restrictions following world outcry from Israel’s violent interception of a flotilla heading for Gaza on May 31, 2010, when nine pro-Palestinian activists were killed.

Israel has complained often about Egypt’s inability to stop the smuggling.

In recent months, Palestinian militants in Gaza have fired rockets at Israeli cities, indicating that that have graduated from the homemade, wobbly short-range projectiles to factory-made, longer-range rockets. Israel charges that Iran is among the suppliers, and weapons merchants have been secreting the rockets and other ordnance through Egypt’s Sinai desert to the tunnels, and then into Gaza.

Rafah is impractical as a cargo crossing, however, because goods would have to be transported across the 130 mile- (210 kilometer-) wide Sinai desert in Egypt. It also means a long, hot bus trip for Palestinians crossing into Egypt through Rafah.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel