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 2. Middle East and North Africa
 3. Palestine

 * Conflict
 * News
 * 16 October 2023


RAFAH: NO WAY IN FOR GAZA AID, NO WAY OUT FOR PALESTINIANS

So far, calls from international leaders and relief officials for a humanitarian
corridor have shown no progress. 

Bianca Carrera

Freelance journalist specialized in the Middle East and North Africa based
between Spain, Morocco, and Egypt

Javier Jennings Mozo

Audiovisual freelance journalist based in Cairo who specialises in social
issues. He has previously covered the Balkans and Spain

Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters
Palestinians with dual citizenship gather at the Rafah border crossing with
Egypt in the hope of getting permission to leave the Gaza Strip on 16 October
2023.
Bianca Carrera

Freelance journalist specialized in the Middle East and North Africa based
between Spain, Morocco, and Egypt

Javier Jennings Mozo

Audiovisual freelance journalist based in Cairo who specialises in social
issues. He has previously covered the Balkans and Spain

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CAIRO

Aid flights are landing at el-Arish international airport in northern Egypt, but
so far there’s no agreement to allow urgently needed relief supplies into the
Gaza Strip, where needs are soaring as Israel intensifies its bombardment ahead
of an expected ground invasion.

Establishing a humanitarian corridor into the densely populated enclave is
challenging because you need some kind of ceasefire, according to Marco Sassòli,
an international law expert and professor at the University of Geneva in
Switzerland. 

“This presupposes an agreement between the parties, because both must promise
that they don’t take advantage of this corridor to invade or to break out,”
Sassòli told The New Humanitarian. 

Israel began its bombardment after gunmen from Hamas, the political and militant
group that governs Gaza, stormed into Israel on 7 October, killing more than
1,400 people – many of them civilians – and taking nearly 200 hostages. 

More than 2,800 people in Gaza, which has a population of around 2.3 million,
have been killed in Israeli strikes and at least 10,000 have been wounded.
Israel has also cut off water and electricity and blocked the entry of food,
medicine, and fuel into the enclave since 9 October, sparking concerns about a
growing humanitarian catastrophe and allegations of collective punishment.

Aid organisations and world leaders are increasingly calling for the
establishment of a humanitarian corridor into Gaza.

Discussions have been underway for several days to try to open one through the
Rafah border crossing, with the United States – which has voiced its full
support for Israel’s response to the Hamas attack – raising the point with
Israeli officials several times in recent days. On 15 October, Washington
appointed a special envoy to “urgently address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza”.

Egypt has told the international community to direct aid flights to el-Arish
airport, some 45 kilometres from Rafah, and has said it will help facilitate the
delivery of humanitarian supplies to Gaza. However, Egypt has said it will not
accept a mass exodus of Palestinian civilians onto its territory, and Israel is
reportedly so far not cooperating with efforts to open a humanitarian corridor.

Israel has bombed the Gaza side of the Rafah border crossing several times in
the past week, rendering it inoperable, according to Egyptian officials.
However, oil trucks bearing UN flags reportedly entered Egypt from Gaza via
Rafah on 16 October to pick up fuel, with hospitals in the enclave expected to
run out of supplies to power their generators within 24 hours. But there were no
immediate reports of them returning into Gaza with fuel.

Meanwhile, Gaza’s overwhelmed hospitals are also reportedly critically low on
medical supplies and water. UN shelters across the territory housing many of the
one million Palestinians who have been displaced are reportedly out of water.
And residents who have so far been spared the worst effects of the bombing say
that water is only coming from their pipes for maybe 30 minutes a day and it is
too contaminated with sewage and sea water to drink. 

Food is also reportedly in short supply, and hundreds of thousands of people
have fled toward the southern Gaza Strip after Israel ordered around 1.1 million
people to evacuate the north of the enclave. 

A spokesperson from UNICEF told The New Humanitarian that the children’s aid
agency was also running out of supplies in Gaza. “We ask for humanitarian
corridors, for pauses to be able to deliver the aid that is needed by the
children and the families in Gaza,” the spokesperson said. “This is a matter of
life or death for the Gazan civilians.” 

Ivan Karakashian, advocacy manager at the Norwegian Refugee Council, said NRC’s
staff in Gaza have been unable to reach people in need. “Without humanitarian
access or safety guarantees, we cannot stage humanitarian relief. We need all
parties to provide safe passage and to respect civilian sites,” Karakashian told
The New Humanitarian. 


HUMANITARIAN CORRIDOR AND SAFETY CONCERNS

If a humanitarian corridor is to be established, it will almost certainly be
through the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza. There are only two
other border crossings into Gaza: Erez and Kerem Shalom. They connect Gaza to
Israel, and both are shut.



Israel has maintained a blockade of Gaza since 2007, tightly controlling what
goods and people are able to enter and exit as well as access to the enclave by
sea. Egypt has cooperated with Israel in maintaining the blockade, and supplies
entering through Rafah need to be approved by Israel. 

Negotiations to establish a humanitarian corridor reportedly involve allowing
Israel to inspect relief trucks entering Gaza. Israeli officials have also
previously said that it will not restore electricity and water supply to Gaza or
allow aid to enter until Hamas releases the hostages it took on 7 October. Egypt
has apparently made allowing the exit of Palestinian dual nationals from Gaza
into its territory conditional on Israel allowing the passage of aid into the
enclave. 

The World Health Organization said that relief supplies, including medical
supplies for some 300,000 patients, are waiting to enter Gaza through Rafah.
Jordan, Türkiye, the United Arab Emirates, the WHO, and the Red Cross have
already sent relief flights to el-Arish airport, and the Red Crescent has
warehouses full of aid in the city of el-Arish, CNN reported. 

But the entry of aid is only one issue hampering the humanitarian response in
the enclave: Israel has reportedly so far refused to provide guarantees that it
will not bomb trucks carrying relief. 

“We need safe access for our teams to move around Gaza. We have staff, we have
supplies, but we need the safety guarantees and the humanitarian space to carry
out our work safely,” Ala’a Nayel, a spokesperson for the International
Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), told The New Humanitarian. 

Nayel added that ICRC was “speaking with the parties and others with influence
about our humanitarian concerns in Israel and Gaza as well as the rights of
civilians under international humanitarian law”.

ICRC defines humanitarian corridors as “agreements between parties to the armed
conflict to allow for safe passage for a limited time in a specific geographic
area. They can allow civilians to leave, humanitarian assistance to come in or
allow for the evacuation of the wounded, sick or dead,” according to the
organisation’s website. 

Whether or not an agreement is in place, “civilians… must be protected from the
effects of hostilities, must be allowed to evacuate from a besieged area, and
humanitarian organisations must be able to work whenever and wherever necessary
to provide protection and assistance to people”, ICRC says.


EGYPT’S CONCERNS 

While aid is waiting on the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing to enter Gaza,
thousands of people – including foreign nationals and dual citizens – have
gathered on the Palestinian side of the crossing, hoping to be able to leave. 

Egypt has long-standing security and political concerns about Palestinians
entering the country from the Rafah border crossing, according to Jacob
Eriksson, a lecturer in post-war recovery studies at the University of York in
Britain. 

Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, the domestic branch of which
Egypt has outlawed as a terrorist organisation. “[Egypt] is concerned about the
passage of Hamas operatives over the crossing into Egypt,” Eriksson explained.
“The Egyptian government closely monitors and controls access and traffic to try
and ensure that security threats are not present at the Rafah crossing.”

> “Given the history of displacement in this conflict, and the fact that there
> has been talk of a second Nakba, there’s a concern that the infrastructure of
> the Gaza Strip will be completely demolished.” 

A speech by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on 8 October telling
Palestinians in Gaza to “get out of there now” touched off concerns about a mass
exodus from the enclave into Egypt. And on 10 October, a spokesperson for the
Israeli military said, “Rafah crossing is still open. Anyone who can get out, I
would advise them to get out.” Later, on X, formerly known as Twitter, Israel’s
ambassador to Egypt said that Israel had “not asked the Palestinians to move" to
Egypt’s Sinai peninsula. 

While supporting the opening of the Rafah border crossing to aid, Egypt has been
clear that it is firmly opposed to allowing corridors into its territory for
civilians to leave. Human rights advocates have raised concerns that, should a
large number of Palestinians from Gaza flee to Egypt, Israel would not allow
them to return once the current round of hostilities has ended, raising the
prospect of ethnic cleansing. 

“Given the history of displacement in this conflict, and the fact that there has
been talk of a second Nakba, there’s a concern that the infrastructure of the
Gaza Strip will be completely demolished, that it is basically not going to be
fit for human residents anymore, and that there are going to be millions of
Palestinian refugees who will then not be able to return to the Gaza Strip,”
Eriksson said.

“There is significant concern both by Egyptian officials, and also widely within
the Arab world, that Israel is looking to alter the future of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the expense of the neighbouring Arab states.”

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has used these concerns to back his
country’s decision not to allow in refugees from Gaza. 

Egypt has also recently taken in over 250,000 Sudanese refugees since a civil
war broke out in April this year while facing a severe economic crisis. El-Sisi
is also standing for re-election in December this year, which he is widely
expected to win despite increasing social unrest. 


STUCK IN EGYPT

Meanwhile, several hundred Palestinians from Gaza who were in Egypt for medical
treatment, business, and other reasons have found themselves stranded in
el-Arish city, separated from their families and unable to re-enter Gaza since 7
October. 

Aylol Abu Elwan, who had travelled to Egypt for medical treatment, said he had
rushed back to Rafah when the hostilities began but was unable to enter Gaza
after Israel bombed the crossing. Many of the Palestinians in el-Arish are
running out of money because they hadn’t anticipated having to pay for
accommodation and food for so long.

As unbelievable as it may seem to those watching the unfolding bombardment,
27-year-old Abu Elwan said: “We are sitting waiting with anxiety because we want
to enter Gaza to see our family and check up on them.”

“We have not been able to communicate with them a lot,” he added. “Hopefully, a
solution arrives that ends the bombardment and the war, and that lets us all
return to our homes and see our family and loved ones.” 

Additional reporting and editing by Eric Reidy, in Boston, United States.


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