Why is the Rafah crossing that borders Egypt and now controlled by Israel important?
The Israeli Army announced this Tuesday the seizure of the Gazan side of the Rafah border crossing, in the southern end of the Gaza Strip, adjacent to Egypt and the only one that was not controlled by the Jewish State until today. Controlled and managed by the Egyptian authorities, the Government of this country has been dealing in recent years with the Islamist group Hamas to supervise who entered and left Gaza, but everything changed on October 7, when the war began in the Palestinian enclave.
These are the keys of the importance of the border crossing and of this Israeli movement in its offensive against the Palestinian Rafah:
Rafah, the main humanitarian route
Since 2007 Israel subjects Gaza to a land, sea and air blockade, so Rafah – a land crossing for people, but not goods – is the vital link between the besieged territory and the rest of the world. After the Hamas attack on Israeli territory on October 7, which left some 1,200 dead, Israel closed all its crossings to Gaza and left Rafah as the only entrance for humanitarian aid. In its assault on Palestinian territory, Israel has left more than 34,000 dead – almost half of them children. Israel bombed the Palestinian side of Rafah up to four times at the beginning of the war, forcing Egypt to keep the crossing suspended during the first days of the conflict and repair the damage in record time to adapt it to the passage of goods.
Input control
Although Rafah was not under direct Israeli control, the Jewish State has exercised a absolute dominion about what entered the enclave. Every aid truck has to go through an Israeli control, which is responsible for saying yes or no to the products that enter. Several tons of aid, vital for daily life, have been rejected by Israeli decision.
Exit route
Rafah is also the route through which Gazans with dual nationality, with relatives in Egypt or Egyptians, or those who have been able to pay “coordination rates” They have been able to escape from the conflict to the country of the pharaohs. Every night the crossing authorities on the Palestinian side publish a list of people who have been approved, whose application and acceptance can take several weeks, to be able to cross into the Sinai, including the seriously injured who are subsequently transferred to hospitals. from Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Italy and Qatar, among others.
Now, with the Israeli flag raised on the Palestinian side of Rafah, the movement of people and humanitarian aid may be impacted, which would further aggravate the devastation suffered by the Mediterranean enclave.
From one control to another
The history of control of this border crossing reflects the instability that this area has experienced for decades. Israel invaded the Sinai Peninsula in the 1967 Six-Day War, but then returned it to Egypt in the peace treaty the two countries signed in 1979. The last Israeli soldiers left the Sinai in 1982. Israel controlled the Rafah crossing until 2005, when it withdrew from Gaza.
Thus, the crossing was under the control of Egypt, the Palestinian National Authority and the European Union, which launched the European Union Border Assistance Mission (EUBAM) that year with the aim of supervising Rafah border operations. and build trust between Israel and the Palestinian government. However, this trust ended in 2007like the European mission, after the seizure of power in Gaza by Hamas.
Egypt then also decided to close the crossing for security reasons and since then it has been practically sealed, with the sole exception of the intermittent crossing of Palestinians. Faced with the blockade, the smuggling in the border area and all types of merchandise, including weapons, were introduced through an extensive network of tunnels that cross the border.
