JERUSALEM — Israel’s military liaison to the Palestinians says the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt would tipen in stages in the coming days as part of Western-backed Egyptian power-sharing efforts for the Palestinian territory. The move is a part of a United States-backed cease-fire plan aiming to restore medical evacuations and closely controlled travel for Gaza’s neediest residents, after months of closure, Dec. 3, 2025.
COGAT, in a statement carried by Reuters, said the Rafah crossing would operate under similar conditions to those implemented in January, when Gaza residents were permitted one-way travel into Egypt, subject to vetting by Israel and with an EU monitoring mission. Israeli security officials have approved the resumed arrangement, in which Egypt will once again manage its side of the terminal, and European Union staff will monitor pedestrian traffic at the crossing.
The planned reopening is a key element of the current cease-fire package, according to an Associated Press report, which added that medical evacuations will use the crossing, with a limited number of passengers. The World Health Organisation says more than 16,500 people sick or injured in Gaza require treatment abroad, highlighting why the Rafah crossing is so important to aid agencies as a lifeline for patients trapped for months in the shell of a health system.
The Rafah crossing, which Israeli forces seized control of from the Palestinian side in the latest assault on Gaza in May 2024, closed then and briefly reopened this week under an earlier cease-fire to process small numbers of wounded Palestinians for transfer to Egyptian hospitals. Since then, most of the aid destined for southern Gaza has been rerouted via the Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom crossing and civilians wanting to leave scrambled on a patchwork of ad hoc evacuation lists and long waits with no clear schedule.
Terms – Rafah crossing in new EU monitoring mission
The European Union’s border assistance mission at the Rafah crossing, which had been dormant since Hamas seized Gaza in 2007, was lifted both ceremonially and technically at the beginning of 2025. At the end of January, the E.U. foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said that “the European Union’s civilian border mission deploys today to the Rafah Crossing at the request of Palestinians and Israelis,” according to a Reuters dispatch from Brussels and Cairo, adding that the mission would support Palestinian border personnel and assist in transferring people in need of medical care.
European officials have used the past few weeks to call for more consistent access through the Rafah crossing. EU crisis management commissioner Hadja Lahbib warned during a late November visit to the Egyptian side of the border that Gaza could confront a “catastrophic” winter should relief and evacuation corridors stay closed, and called on Israel to permit larger amounts of aid and people through all functioning crossings.
Even before the most recent announcement, diplomats and aid workers had pointed to Rafah as an essential lifeline for Gaza’s 2.3 million people. A June 2024 analysis by The Washington Post described how Egypt, Israel, the Palestinian Authority and the European Union were already exploring a return to what in essence was a pre-2007-style arrangement in which Palestinian officers oversaw the terminal with backing from an E.U. mission — discussions that indeed have now anticipated this week’s revived European role.
In another investigation published later that month, The Washington Post gave a detailed account of how Israel’s capturing and virtual closure of the Rafah crossing had left critically ill Palestinians with “no way out” as hospitals started to run low on fuel, medicines and personnel. Human rights groups and humanitarian organisations say the extended shutdown has transformed exit permits into a matter of life and death for thousands of patients, students and families with foreign connections.
So far, Israel has not specified who might be permitted to leave via the Rafah crossing, apart from repeating that case-by-case security clearance is required, and officials have given no firm opening date beyond the “coming days.” The return of an E.U. presence, with Egyptian coordination, is intended to provide confidence to all sides that the crossing will not again fall into Hamas’s hands and to give Gazans at least a slender passage to safety after over a year of war. Whether the new setup becomes a lasting channel or another short-lived experiment depends on how smoothly the first departures go — and on whether the cease-fire that allowed this reopening can stick.
