Sick and wounded Palestinians enter Egypt after Israel reopens Rafah crossing | Gaza

Sick and injured Palestinians began crossing into Egypt to receive medical treatment after Israel allowed a limited reopening of the Palestinian territory’s Rafah border post in fragile diplomatic efforts to take the conflict a step further.

According to Egyptian officials, about 150 people were supposed to leave the area and another 50 were supposed to enter the area on Monday, 20 months after Israeli forces closed the crossing.

According to footage from Egyptian state television, ambulances waited for hours at the border to take patients across after sunset. The pass has been closed since Israeli troops captured it in May 2024, but was briefly opened in early 2025 during a ceasefire to evacuate medical patients.

About 20,000 Palestinian children and adults in need of medical care hope to leave the devastated area through the crossing, according to Gaza health officials. Thousands of Palestinians outside the region hope to enter the region and return to their homes.

When Israel took control of the Rafah crossing, Gaza’s only crossing not shared with Israel, it described it as necessary to prevent Hamas’ arms smuggling. The move isolated the region, cutting off a critical lifeline for Palestinians seeking access to medical care, travel and trade.

Israel has made clear that once partially reopened, all movements at the crossing will be subject to joint Israeli-Egyptian security screening, and that for now only a small fraction of Gaza’s tens of thousands of wounded and sick Palestinians will be allowed to leave each day.

Thousands of civilians have registered with the World Health Organization for medical evacuation. More than a fifth of them are children, according to Médecins Sans Frontières. Among the patients are more than 11,000 cancer patients.

Israeli air strikes on hospitals have left the Palestinian healthcare system in ruins. In March 2025, Israel destroys Gaza’s only specialized cancer treatment hospitalthe region’s only oncology care provider. Since then, doctors have been pushed into makeshift clinics operating with virtually no resources, including the tools needed for diagnosis.

Gaza health officials said: There are about 4,000 people With official referrals for treatment to third countries who cannot cross the border.

For some, reopening has come too late. Dalia Abu Kashef, 28, died last week while waiting for permission to cross the road for a liver transplant. “We found a volunteer – his brother – who was ready to donate part of his liver,” her husband Muatasem El-Rass told Reuters. “We were waiting for the gate to open, hoping for a happy ending so we could travel and do the surgery. However, his condition worsened and he died.”

WHO reported that 900 people, including children and cancer patients, They died while waiting for evacuation.

The limited reopening of the welfare gate offers a rare opportunity for families torn apart by more than two years of war to reunite. Many families who fled to Cairo early in the war did not expect to stay this long.

In the first months of the war before Israel closed the border, approximately 100,000 Palestinians crossed into Egypt via Rafah.

“I love Gaza and I don’t see any other place that feels like home,” said Mohammed Talal, a 28-year-old foreign exchange trader whose house in Jabaliyah, north of Gaza, was destroyed. “Are you going to go back to living in a tent? I don’t care,” he said. “I can’t wait to hold my father in my arms and give him a kiss on his forehead.”

Israel sealed the Rafah border crossing as a bargaining chip and linked its reopening with the return of all hostages (alive or dead) taken during the Hamas-led offensive on October 7, 2023. That attitude changed only last week, when the Israeli military announced it had found the remains of the last captive, Master Sergeant Ran Gvili, the police officer killed during the initial attack that triggered the war.

The reopening is seen as an important step as we move into the second phase of the US-brokered ceasefire agreement. The first phase called for all hostages held in Gaza to be exchanged for hundreds of Palestinians held by Israel, an increase in much-needed humanitarian aid, and a partial withdrawal of Israeli troops.

The second phase of the ceasefire agreement is more complex. It calls for the establishment of a new Palestinian committee to govern Gaza, the deployment of an international security force, the disarmament of Hamas and steps to begin reconstruction.

The EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, said the opening of the Rafah crossing “marks a concrete and positive step in the peace plan” for the war-torn region. “The EU civilian mission is on the ground to monitor crossing operations and support Palestinian border guards,” he wrote online.

The National Committee for Gaza Administration, a group of Palestinian technocrats tasked with helping administer the area, welcomed the reopening of the crossing as a symbolic first step rather than a solution. In a statement posted on social media on Monday, the committee called the move “the beginning of a long process of reuniting what has been torn apart and opening a real window of hope for our people in the Gaza Strip.”

The reopening of Rafah marks a temporary turning point after the fragile ceasefire reached last October; It proved to be a more nominal ceasefire than a real one. Four months later, he has failed to stop the bombardment of Gaza and has offered a pause instead of peace.

Life in Gaza remains unstable. Although the air strikes and gunfire slowed down, they did not stop. At the same time, the storms further exacerbated the crisis, causing deaths and flooding in displacement camps that had already stretched beyond their borders.

The fragility of the ceasefire was highlighted once again on Saturday, when Israeli airstrikes killed at least 32 people, including children, according to local health officials. The Israeli military said the attacks targeted militants and weapons infrastructure.

Israeli forces have killed at least 509 Palestinians and injured 1,405 others, including hundreds of children, since the ceasefire in Gaza came into force in early October.

Despite the reopening of Rafah, Israel still does not allow entry to foreign journalists, who have been banned from entering Gaza since the beginning of the war. Reporting from Gaza for international media, including the Guardian, is carried out solely by journalists living there, of whom hundreds have been killed.