What is the Rafah crossing, and who can now use it?

What is the Rafah crossing?

The Rafah border crossing from Gaza into Egypt is the only one of the Gaza crossing points that does not communicate with Israel. While it was intended to be a significant crossing, since the Hamas takeover in 2007 it has only intermittently been open to Palestinians, most notably during the brief period when the Muslim Brotherhood governed Egypt up until 2013.

Israel and Egypt’s joint blockade of Gaza under Hamas has made the crossing highly politically sensitive in Cairo – a situation that was exacerbated by an Islamist insurgency in the Sinai, which led to Egypt imposing controls on who was allowed to travel to towns and cities close to the Rafah crossing, not least the major hub of Arish.

Rafah, once a major smuggling hub, itself is split between Egyptian Rafah and Palestinian Rafah, with the border running through it. Egypt’s deliberate flooding of the border area in 2015 was designed to close smuggling tunnels that connected the two, which at one time allowed people and goods to pass from Gaza to Egypt.

Have people been allowed to use the crossing before today?

Despite international pressure to open the crossing since the beginning of Israel’s latest conflict with Hamas in Gaza, Rafah has been closed. Now, after international intervention and the mediation of Qatar, which has close contacts with Hamas’s leadership, the crossing has been opened to hundreds of dual nationals living in Gaza who have foreign passports, as well as those who are injured and need treatment outside Gaza and its collapsing health system.

According to the arrangements put in place by Cairo, the embassies of those people being allowed to cross have been informed in advance and the hope is that further evacuations will be allowed in the coming days.

What about the injured?

Casualties were delivered to the crossing in Palestinian ambulances, two to each ambulance, where they were ferried to a triage centre on the other side staffed by Egyptian paramedics, who examined the wounded and loaded them into a waiting fleet of Egyptian ambulances.

Most are understood to have been taken to hospitals in Arish, as well as to an Egyptian field hospital at Sheikh Zuwayed in the Sinai and Turkish field hospitals that have been established in recent weeks.

Who has left so far?

Some foreign nationals have been allowed to leave Gaza. Among them are two Filipino doctors with Médecins sans Frontières, a Philippine foreign ministry official has said. Other foreign governments, including the UK, Ukraine and US, have indicated they hope their nationals will be allowed to leave soon. Hundreds of foreign passport holders are waiting at the Gaza side of the crossing.