Most of Gaza is enclosed by Israel: army to the north and east, gunboats to the west, and warplanes control the sky above.
So for Palestinians the Rafah gate – along Gaza’s short southern border with Egypt – has long been the one lifeline to the outside world that does not pass through Israel, at least in normal times.
Some semblance of that normality began to return on Monday when, under the terms of a US-brokered ceasefire signed last year, and after months of pressure from humanitarian organizations and international allies, Israel reopened the Rafah crossing. That will allow a limited number of Palestinians to pass in both directions.
Some of those crossing have reported harassment or abuse. Of the estimated 20,000 Gazans seeking to cross and access medical treatment, only a handful exited on the first day, according to news reports, and a very small number were allowed entry. Small numbers have crossed since.
Israel’s unit for Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) has said that all arrivals and departures would be vetted ‘in coordination with Egypt, following prior security clearance of individuals by Israel, and under the supervision of the European Union mission’.
Nevertheless, the EU’s civilian Border Assistance Mission (EUBAM), which has returned to Rafah after years of conflict and political deadlock, called its redeployment and the crossing’s reopening ‘significant steps in the implementation of the Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict.’
It is a limited opening, for who knows how long. Major political and military and humanitarian obstacles lie ahead as President Donald Trump and his advisers and allies try to advance the 10 October 2025 ceasefire into the proposed later stages of the ‘Comprehensive Plan’.
That would see the installation of a technocratic administration mechanism working with Palestinian and international partners to rebuild Gaza – after two years of war between Israel and Hamas that Gaza health authorities say has killed more than 71,000 Palestinians and left at least 10,000 missing. They also say more than 520 Palestinians have been killed since the ceasefire.
A symbol
Rafah is only one crossing but it has real significance – symbolic and practical – for both sides. Access through the border crossing has been on-again, off-again throughout decades of Israeli military occupation in Gaza.
Israel sealed it off completely in May 2024, seven months into the war that followed Hamas’s 7 October 2023 cross-border attack which killed around 1200 people in Israel, with more than 250 others taken hostage. It was the release of the remains of the last of those hostages in January that triggered the reopening of Rafah.
The renewed access for Palestinians – the first to enter Gaza since the 2023 hostilities broke out – may cause problems for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He faces elections later this year and reopening the crossing has opened up divisions with some of his far-right coalition allies.
At a security cabinet meeting on 25 January Itamar Ben Gvir, Israel’s Minister of National Security, criticized the decision, arguing that Hamas had not yet been eliminated. ‘Enough with Kushner and Witkoff’s naivety – if Rafah Crossing opens, it will be a big mistake and a very bad message,’ he is reported to have said.
Ben Gvir and his fellow ultranationalists have made no secret of their wish to see Palestinians expelled from Gaza and for the return of Israeli settlers, who were forced to leave the strip by a previous Israeli government in 2005.
Their voices will be loud in the election campaign, and the Trump administration and international community must be on guard to prevent backsliding by the Israeli government and any attempt to seal Gaza off once again.
But Israel does have real security concerns over Rafah, regarding it as a key channel for arms, weapons and money to flow to Hamas.
Certainly, in the years when Hamas controlled the Gaza Strip after 2007, its Egyptian border turned into a California Gold Rush-style encampment of corrugated iron sheds, providing access to tunnels through which smugglers brought food, consumer goods, weapons and even cars.
A parallel network of tunnels run by Palestinian militant groups were hidden from sight and – it later emerged – were a key part of Hamas’s vast military underground network that extended throughout the Gaza Strip.
Lessons from history
When – and if – Rafah opens for larger numbers of travellers, its mechanisms must be transparent and as free from manipulation as possible.
History provides lessons. After Israel pulled its soldiers and settlers out of Gaza in 2005, Palestinian and Egyptian officials controlled their own sides of the crossing, with an earlier iteration of EUBAM. Israeli officials kept watch on cameras from Kerem Shalom, Israel’s much larger goods crossing two miles away.
One weakness of the previous arrangement was that if the European monitors weren’t on site the crossing had to close: But monitors could only access the crossing through an Israeli-controlled route, allowing Israel to seal off access and close the crossing, citing security concerns.
Rafah also risks becoming a focal point for competing Palestinian factions eager to secure the terminal, with the power, money and patronage that such control gives whichever faction is in control.
This was evident after Hamas won elections in 2006 and vied with President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah-dominated forces for control of the crossing. A gun battle broke out that year when Hamas’s prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, tried to cross through Rafah with millions of dollars in cash raised from donors abroad.
Hope
But for all the risks associated with opening up Gaza, there are risks to keeping it locked down too. Thwarted hope leads to despair. And despair, critics of Israel’s ‘security-first’ approach say, is what led to decades of conflict, bloodshed and political deadlock.
And it is not that long ago that Rafah was the focus of hopes for a more open, economically viable Palestine.
Within sight of the Rafah crossing are the ruins of Gaza International Airport. Constructed during the 1990s in the optimistic era of the Oslo Accords, it was opened in December 1998 by US President Bill Clinton. In the few short years that the airport operated, it became a symbol of hope and economic possibilities.
That post-Oslo era was brief. Less than two years after Clinton’s visit, the Second Intifada broke out. Hope and prosperity faltered during the mutual bloodletting of the early 2000s, with near daily Palestinian suicide bombings, Israeli air strikes, curfews, shootings, tank raids and recriminations. Israel bombed the airport after 9/11, and it is now in ruins.