Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have descended on the south of the Gaza Strip as a potential Israeli ground operation looms. <\/p>\n
But where they will go from there is anyone\u2019s guess. The coastal enclave is blockaded by land, air and sea by Israel, which has declared war on its Hamas rulers for a brazen attack on October 7 that killed 1,400 people. Israel has also shut off the supply of water, electricity, food and fuel, leaving the impoverished territory\u2019s 2 million residents helpless. <\/p>\n
A border crossing with Egypt in the south has been touted as the last hope for Gazans to escape as Israel\u2019s bombs rain down, and many Palestinians have begun moving in its direction in anticipation. <\/p>\n
That crossing at Rafah however is shut. Here\u2019s what we know about it. <\/p>\n
The crossing is currently shut, with aid unable to get into Gaza. The United States has been pressuring Egypt to establish a humanitarian corridor for civilians in Gaza, as well as for foreigners. Egypt has said it won\u2019t allow refugees to flood its territory and has instead insisted that Israel allow it to deliver aid to Gazans. <\/p>\n
Opening of the border may be a complicated matter given the number of parties involved. It would require the approval of Egypt and Hamas, which directly control the crossing, as well as an okay from Israel, which has been bombing Gaza, including Rafah\u2019s vicinity. Egypt has demanded assurances that Israel won\u2019t bomb aid convoys. <\/p>\n
Multiple airstrikes have been reported around the Rafah Crossing since the war started, including one on Tuesday. Asked about the bombing, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson Lt. Col. Richard Hecht said on Tuesday: \u201cWhen we see Hamas targets moving, we will take care of it.\u201d <\/p>\n
Dozens of trucks are on the Egyptian side of the crossing waiting to get into Gaza. Egypt has said there has been no progress in efforts to open it and Israel has denied there were any arrangements for its opening. <\/p>\n
Located in Egypt\u2019s north Sinai, the Rafah Crossing is the sole border crossing between Gaza and Egypt. It falls along an 8-mile (12.8-kilometer) fence that separates Gaza from the Sinai desert. <\/p>\n
Gaza has changed hands several times over the past 70 years. It fell under Egyptian control in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, and was captured by Israel in the 1967 war, after which Israel began settling Jews there and significantly curtailed the movement of its Palestinian residents. In 2005, Israel withdrew its troops and settlers from the territory, and two years later the strip was seized by Hamas. <\/p>\n
Since then, Egypt and Israel have imposed tight controls on their respective borders with the territory and Israel blockades it further by restricting travel by sea or air. Israel has also enclosed the territory with a heavily fortified border fence. <\/p>\n
Before the war that started this month, Israel had two crossings with Gaza: Erez, which is for the movement of people, and Kerem Shalom, for goods. Both were heavily restricted and have been shut since the war began. <\/p>\n
That has left the Rafah Crossing with Egypt as the territory\u2019s only entrypoint to the outside world. <\/p>\n
According to United Nations figures, an average of 27,000 people crossed the border each month as of July this year. The border was open for 138 days and closed for 74 this year until that month. <\/p>\n
Closures often depend on the security and political situation on the ground. While Israel has no direct control over the crossing, Egypt\u2019s closures often coincide with Israel\u2019s own tightening of restrictions on Gaza. <\/p>\n
Israel and Egypt signed a peace treaty in 1982, which saw the Jewish state withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula that it had captured from Egypt in 1967. <\/p>\n
Israel then opened the Rafah Crossing, which it controlled until it withdrew from Gaza in 2005. Between then and Hamas\u2019 takeover of Gaza in 2007, the crossing was controlled by the European Union, which worked closely with Egyptian officials. <\/p>\n
Between 2005 and 2007, some 450,000 passengers used the crossing with an average of about 1,500 people per day. <\/p>\n
Following Hamas\u2019 takeover, Egypt and Israel significantly tightened restrictions on the movement of goods and people in and out of the territory. But in 2008, militants blew up fortifications on the border with Egypt near Rafah, prompting at least 50,000 Gazans to flood into Egypt to buy food, fuel and other supplies. <\/p>\n
Shortly after the breach, Egypt sealed its barrier with barbed wire and metal barricades. <\/p>\n
The Rafah Crossing has since been tightly controlled, with limited access and lengthy bureaucratic and security processes required of Palestinians wishing to cross into Egypt. <\/p>\n
Movement through Rafah on normal days is extremely limited; only Gazans with permits as well as foreign nationals can use it to travel between Gaza and Egypt. <\/p>\n
Gazans wishing to cross the border often have long waits. Jason Shawa, a Palestinian American from Seattle who lives in Gaza, says the process has taken him a minimum of 30 days but wait times could last up to three months. <\/p>\n
Travelers require an exit permit from Hamas and an entry permit from Egypt, he said. The process requires him to submit his documents to a Hamas government office for a permit to exit the territory. A few days later, he would receive a text message telling him which day he can leave, which could be up to three months later. <\/p>\n
On the day of departure, a bus would take travelers from the Palestinian side of the border to the Egyptian one, where they would wait hours for Egyptian authorities to receive and process visa applications. Many travelers are turned away there, Shawa said, adding that Palestinians are regularly mistreated there. <\/p>\n
Egypt, which already hosts millions of migrants, is uneasy about the prospect of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees crossing into its territory. More than 2 million Palestinians live in Gaza. <\/p>\n
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi last week said his country is trying to help \u2013 within limits. <\/p>\n
\u201cOf course, we sympathize. But be careful, while we sympathize, we must always be using our minds in order to reach peace and safety in a manner that doesn\u2019t cost us much,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Many have also fumed at the idea of turning the Gazan population into refugees once again by displacing them from Gaza. Most Gazans are registered by the UN as refugees, whose ancestors came from areas that are now part of Israel. <\/p>\n
\u201cI think that is a plan of the usual suspects to try and create de facto issues on the ground. No refugees in Jordan. No refugees in Egypt,\u201d Jordan\u2019s King Abdullah said on Tuesday. <\/p>\n
Egypt has called on Israel to allow humanitarian aid to enter via Rafah, but is yet to give in to US calls to establish a safe corridor for civilians inside Egyptian territory. <\/p>\n\n
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have descended on the south of the Gaza Strip as a potential Israeli ground operation looms. But where they will go from there is anyone\u2019s guess. The coastal enclave is blockaded by land, air and sea by Israel, which has declared war on its Hamas rulers for a brazen attack <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":10180,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-10179","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10179\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}