A group of 50 Palestinian children who are sick and injured began crossing into Egypt for medical treatment on Saturday through Gaza's Rafah crossing, marking the first time the border has been opened in nearly nine months, reports AP.
This reopening is a significant development in the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, which was reached earlier this month. Israel had agreed to allow the crossing to reopen after Hamas released the last surviving female hostages in Gaza.
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Egypt's Al-Qahera television broadcast footage showing Palestinian Red Cross ambulances arriving at the crossing gate, with some children being transferred from gurneys to ambulances on the Egyptian side.
These children were then taken to hospitals in the Egyptian city of el-Arish and other locations. Among them was a young girl who had lost her foot and was seen being loaded into an Egyptian ambulance.
The Gaza Health Ministry reported that about 60 family members accompanied the children. These children are the first in what is expected to be a series of regular evacuations for treatment abroad.
Over the past 15 months, Israel's military actions in Gaza, which were in response to Hamas's attack on Israel in October 2023, have severely damaged Gaza's health infrastructure, leaving most hospitals inoperable. More than 110,000 Palestinians have been injured, and there is a dire need for treatment, especially for specialized surgeries.
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According to Mohammed Zaqout, the director of hospitals in Gaza's Health Ministry, over 6,000 patients are ready for evacuation, while more than 12,000 are in urgent need of care. However, he noted that the small number of evacuations will not meet the overall demand, expressing hope that more patients would be evacuated in the future.
Rafah is Gaza's only crossing that does not connect to Israel. Israeli forces took control of the Rafah crossing in May, following an offensive in the southern region of Gaza. Egypt also closed its side of the border in protest.
Prior to the war, the Rafah crossing had been essential for allowing Palestinians to seek medical treatment abroad, including chemotherapy, as Gaza's health system was severely constrained by a 15-year blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt.
The process of reopening the crossing required diplomatic efforts and the resolution of security issues among Israeli, Egyptian, and Palestinian officials. Hamas had controlled the Rafah border since 2007 after it took over Gaza from the Palestinian Authority (PA).
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Israel continues to maintain a military presence at the Rafah crossing and the nearby Philadelphia Corridor, a strip of land along the border. It has refused to allow Hamas to take control of the crossing again, accusing it of smuggling weapons through tunnels, although Egypt claims to have destroyed these tunnels years ago. Israel also rejects the idea of the PA officially managing the crossing.
Instead, Palestinian border officers who were previously employed by the PA will staff the crossing, although they will not wear PA insignia.
European Union monitors will also be present, as they were before 2007. Negotiations regarding the second phase of the ceasefire agreement, which involves a permanent ceasefire, a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, and the release of remaining hostages, are set to begin on Monday. Israel has expressed resistance to the idea of the PA overseeing Gaza post-conflict.