Name: What’s behind Israel’s announcement on opening Gaza's Rafah crossing? | DW News
Uploaded: 2025-12-05T17:05:13.000Z
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Now to Gaza, where Israel says it will reopen the Rafah border crossing with Egypt in the next few days, allowing Palestinians to leave the enclave.

The Israeli military says it will allow people to cross into Egypt, but

won't allow aid deliveries or Palestinian residents to enter Gaza.

Egypt however, says it hasn't yet agreed to open its side of the crossing and would only do so if people and aid were allowed to travel in both directions as agreed in the US brokered ceasefire between Hamas and Israel.

But as part of that deal, the free flow of people and aid can only resume once Hamas returns.

Until that happens, Israel wants to continue using the Kerem Shalom crossing for aid deliveries only.

Let's get more on this from journalist Karim Al Ghari who joins us from Cairo.

Tell us more about what Egypt is saying about this.

Well, there was first this somehow curious statement by Kogat, which is the Israeli military arm that is administering the humanitarian aid in Gaza.

And this statement basically reads in accordance with the ceasefire, I quote agreement and a directive of the political echelon, the Rafah crossing will open in the coming days.

And that is the important part now exclusively for the exit of residents from the Gaza Strip to Egypt.

And the statement says this is done in coordination with Egypt and also in the connection coordination with the European Union.

Now soon after this statement there is was the Egyptian State information service who quoted a high official basically denying this news, saying that there's no agreement, there's not such any coordination with Egypt.

And if Egypt, if that happens, Rafah crossing, which is of course also the goal of Egypt, then it cannot be a one way thing, but

Mind you that the Egyptians are very worried about some kind of Palestinian exodus being some kind of some part of some Palestinian displacement scheme or ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strips.

That something the Egyptians trying to avoid basically since two years.

So that's why they saying the crux is opening it both ways.

And why what is the Israeli government saying about apparently not sticking to the plan?

I mean that's one of the interesting things because that is already agreed upon.

It's agreed upon in the Trump ceasefire plan.

There is actually point number eight of the ceasefire plan.

Point number eight is the opening of the Rafah crossing and it says there both ways.

So also to make it able for Palestinians who are stranded abroad or in Egypt and being able to come back.

For example, we have more than 16,000 medical cases in Gaza that urgently need to leave.

But of course, at the end, some of them want to go back to the Gaza Strip.

Now, Israel is not saying anything about why.

It's not the first thing where it's basically a violation of the, of the ceasefire agreement.

We have more than 350 Palestinians that were killed by the Israeli army that still controls more than half of the Gaza Strip.

When they come near to the so called yellow line where the Israeli army is.

So many things that were already agreed upon in the first phase of the Gaza ceasefire agreement are highly problematic until today.

And is Israel explaining why it's not allowing aid deliveries to enter through Rafah?

Well, that's another interesting because that is actually aid delivery was also agreed upon in, in the first phase of the agreement.

And the agreement was that between 5 to 600 trucks can enter the Gaza Strip.

That's roughly what happened before the war.

They say right now the number is somewhere between 100 and 150 trucks a day, 150 trucks average per day.

When it comes over the whole week, 40% of that is food items.

But what is very important right now is the lack of material to prepare the Gaza Strip for the winter.

And there's a lot of things that are basically rejected by the Israeli army to enter.

They say there's kind of a possible dual use.

One of them is holes, for example, for tents that have a diameter.

The UNRWA says it has material for more than 1.3 million people in Gaza to prepare for winter waiting to get in.

And these trucks are not allowed until now to get into the Gaza Strip.