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Israeli Restrictions at Rafah Crossing Could Kill Thousands Awaiting Medical Evacuation
“We know that patients have died basically waiting for evacuation," a WHO spokesperson said, "and that’s something which is horrible when you know just a few miles or kilometers outside that border help is available."
Feb 03, 2026
With only five Palestinians in need of medical evacuation from Gaza permitted to leave through the Rafah crossing after it reopened on Monday, health authorities in the exclave warned that the restrictions Israel is continuing to impose at the crossing could ultimately kill thousands of Palestinians who have been waiting for years for treatment as Israeli attacks have decimated Gaza's health system.
Zaher al-Wahidi, a spokesperson for the Gaza Health Ministry, told Al Jazeera Tuesday that although the crossing has reopened—a step that has been hailed as progress under the "ceasefire" agreement reached in October—the intense screening process Palestinians are subjected to by Israeli authorities at the entry point is "too complex."
About 20,000 patients in Gaza are awaiting medical evacuation, including about 440 people whose cases are critical and need immediate treatment.
Egyptian officials had said before the crossing reopened that 50 people were expected to cross from Gaza into Egypt per day, but al-Wahidi said that if the rate of crossing on Monday continues, "we would need years to evacuate all of these patients, by which time all of them could lose their lives while waiting for an opportunity to leave."
Al Jazeera reported that people hoping to leave Gaza must register their names with Egyptian authorities, who send the names to Israel's Shin Bet for approval. Palestinians then enter a checkpoint run by the Palestinian Authority and European Union representatives before Israeli officers use facial recognition software to identify those who are leaving.
Reporting for the outlet, Nour Odeh said the crossing process has been "humiliating" for Palestinians and exemplifies the "absolute control" Israel demands over the lives of people in Gaza.
"There were strip searches and interrogations, but now there are even more extreme elements. We’re hearing about people being blindfolded, having their hands tied, and being interrogated," said Odeh. "When we talk about security screening, and a person needing urgent medical care, that person is basically being denied medical attention."
Ambulances waited for hours on Monday on the Egyptian side of the border, ready to take patients to 150 hospitals across Egypt that have agreed to treat patients from Gaza, before five people were finally able to cross after sunset.
The process, said al-Wahidi, "will not allow us to evacuate patients and provide medical services to them to give them a chance at life."
About 30,000 Palestinians have also requested to return to Gaza, having fled the exclave after Israel began bombarding civilian infrastructure and imposing a total blockade on humanitarian aid in October 2023—retaliating against Gaza's population of more than 2 million people, about half of whom are children, for a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel.
But only about a dozen people were permitted to reenter Gaza on Monday, falling far short of the daily target of 50.
The Associated Press reported that Palestinians arrived at the border crossing with luggage that they were told they could not bring into Gaza.
“They didn’t let us cross with anything,” Rotana Al-Regeb told the AP after returning to Khan Younis. “They emptied everything before letting us through. We were only allowed to take the clothes on our backs and one bag per person.”
Another woman told Tareq Abu Azzoum of Al Jazeera that she was "blindfolded and interrogated by the Israeli military on her way back to Gaza," and other said "they were intercepted by Israeli-backed militias" who demanded information about armed groups in Gaza.
For people who have waited months or years to return to Gaza, Abu Azzoum said, "the Rafah crossing has been a humiliating process instead of a day marking a beautiful reunion with family."
Palestinian political analyst Muhammad Shehada of the European Council on Foreign Relations said the process "means in practice that Israel has made the Rafah border crossing a one-way ticket. If you decide to go to Gaza, they tell you, 'Okay, you will be caged there permanently. Forget about being able to leave ever again.' If you decide to leave you will have to settle with the concept of being banished and exiled again, permanently, because the queue is so formidably long."
Palestinian analyst @muhammadshehad2 explains the restrictions that Israel has imposed at Rafah Crossing are so harsh that it would take approximately 10 years for all 150,000 Palestinians in Egypt to return to Gaza, and similarly long for the tens of thousands of patients and… https://t.co/FBy1TCAW3L pic.twitter.com/WwBA7rs4xC
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) February 2, 2026
On Tuesday, a World Health Organization (WHO) team arrived at a Palestinian Red Crescent hospital in Khan Younis to take about 16 patients with chronic conditions or injuries sustained in Israeli attacks to the Rafah crossing. The Red Crescent had previously been told 45 people would be able to cross on Tuesday.
Al Jazeera reported that health authorities in Gaza are being forced to choose which sick and wounded patients will be permitted to get treatment first.
“We know that patients have died basically waiting for evacuation," WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier said, "and that’s something which is horrible when you know just a few miles or kilometers outside that border help is available."
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I Went From Chicago to Egypt to March for Gaza—This Was My Experience
The lesson: Egypt is in full “compliance” with Israeli directives, fully complicit in its crimes toward the people of Gaza, and never had the slightest intention of allowing the march of solidarity we had hoped to carry out.
Jul 20, 2025
I participated in the Global March for Gaza because the countries of the world that have the power to stop Israel’s ongoing atrocities against the people of Gaza have done nothing whatsoever to change the situation. The situation is absolutely appalling. I wanted the people of Gaza to know that even if the governments of the world refuse to see their suffering or do anything to bring it to an end, there are ordinary citizens willing to travel across the world to stand with them and demand that they be released from the deadly prison that Gaza has become thanks to the utter impunity Israel and the United States enjoy on the world stage.
Those of us who went knew that the Egyptian authorities might not allow us to carry out our planned march from al-Arish to the Rafah border crossing. However, the march organizers were engaged in good-faith efforts to negotiate with the Egyptian government and to seek their approval, so we went, trusting that our efforts would make some sort of a difference, if even just on the symbolic level, and help to raise global awareness of the horrific and unjustifiable nature of the Palestinians’ suffering.
I had never done anything of this nature before, and I felt frightened and overwhelmed at times as I struggled with the decision of whether to go; I had to push past fears and doubts on numerous occasions, but the sense of necessity and the dire nature of the situation kept me moving forward. I was blessed to have found someone to share a hotel room with before arriving, and she and I were supportive of each other both before and after arriving in Egypt.
The first day we were there, June 13, 2025, we had initially been scheduled to meet at an agreed-upon location in Cairo, board buses to al-Arish, and then again seek permission to march from there to Rafah. However, the plan changed for reasons we weren’t fully aware of (I suspect that the Egyptian authorities were making things difficult for the organizers, and it may have been difficult to find drivers for the buses given the heavy surveillance under which Egyptians must live). In any case, we were instructed to make our way in small groups to the town of Ismailiyya, an hour and a half from Cairo, where we hoped to meet and plan next steps.
In the days that followed, it became clear that we were, indeed, being watched and followed, and scores of activists from various countries were detained and deported.
Three of us set out in a taxi for Ismailiyya, but when we came to the first checkpoint along the road, we were not allowed through. We were told we would have to surrender our passports for some reason. Many non-Egyptians were standing around a nearby building, and it became apparent that they had handed over their passports and had been waiting for them for hours, but to no avail. Some of them warned us not to hand over our passports for fear of not getting them back. Our taxi driver had had his license pulled, and I think he was questioned, though of course he had no clue about anything!
Eventually, the taxi driver got his license back, and we were urged to go back to Cairo. However, we felt as though it was our moral obligation to stay with all the would-be marchers who were stranded without their passports, so we stayed with them instead. The hours went by, and a sense of community began to develop among the people there. At one point, some military vehicles drove up and parked, and very young-looking armed soldiers got out and basically just stood there watching us.
Still more hours later, some of the would-be marchers said, “Well, everybody knows why we’re here, so we might as well demonstrate openly for Palestine!” So, cheers for a free Palestine went up, and speeches were delivered in French, English, and some other languages. Meanwhile, the Egyptian authorities had sent out several military buses and were urging people to get on them to be taken back to Cairo. People were not doing so, however. Eventually, at 7:00 pm local time, plainclothes policemen—thugs, essentially—began lunging at certain individuals, the ones they could see were in leadership positions, and they physically assaulted several of the men, dragging them across the pavement. Others of us locked arms and sat down, but the thugs kept coming at people, knocking a woman violently to the ground and stealing her phone. They were demanding that we get on the buses, which we then did.
They were prisoner buses, with tiny windows at the very top that don’t allow you to see out. I, along with four other women from the American delegation, managed to stay together as we got on one of the buses. We waited for around two hours on the bus, sweltering in the heat, while very gradually, people whose passports had been taken from them got their passports back. Once we were driven off, we expected to be detained and deported. But when we had been traveling in the bus for around an hour heading back to Cairo, we were told that we would simply be let off the bus, five at a time, in locations around Cairo.
We learned that Egypt is indeed a police state, and a gathering of even as few as four people to protest the government is illegal. It was a sobering lesson, and it caused me to feel unwilling to engage in any outward actions that might jeopardize either myself or my group or the local population.
In the days that followed, it became clear that we were, indeed, being watched and followed, and scores of activists from various countries were detained and deported. The crowning act of hostile intimidation by the Egyptian authorities was the arrest, temporary disappearance, and abuse of the Global March’s initiator and lead organizer. Our people were being warned to leave the country, and many of us changed our travel plans to depart earlier than planned.
The lesson: Egypt is in full “compliance” with Israeli directives, fully complicit in its crimes toward the people of Gaza, and never had the slightest intention of allowing the march of solidarity we had hoped to carry out.
As people began leaving the country, a last-minute initiative materialized, namely, that of traveling to Tunisia, whose government and population are nearly all pro-Palestine, to meet with participants in the Sumud overland convoy that had made its way to Egypt’s western border but, not surprisingly, had not been allowed entry. Some of their party might also have been detained at the border (though I’m not sure about this). By the time this initiative emerged, I had already changed my travel plans once, and since the details weren’t very clear to me, I decided simply to head back home.
Now that I am home, I am hoping to become more involved in an initiative that has begun to bypass the United Nation’s useless Security Council by passing a General Assembly resolution that would demand concrete measures such as sending a U.N. peacekeeping force into the occupied Palestinian territories at the request of the State of Palestine, breaking the deadly blockade on Gaza (obviously), calling on countries around the world to jointly boycott Israel on all levels, reopen the apartheid committee, strip Israel of its U.N. credentials, and carry out comprehensive embargos of Israel—pushing individual countries to take this last action in particular. It’s the least we all can do.
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100 Palestinians Killed in Weekend of Israeli Airstrikes on Gaza
Victims include 22 members of one family massacred in their Gaza City home.
Apr 27, 2025
Israel Defense Forces bombing killed at least 100 Palestinians including numerous women and children in the Gaza Strip over the weekend, while the IDF also renewed airstrikes on Lebanon as cease-fire talks between senior Hamas and Egyptian officials wrapped up in Cairo without any breakthrough.
The Gaza Health Ministry said Sunday that Israeli strikes killed at least 51 Palestinians over the previous 24 hours. Among the victims were eight people, including three women and two children, killed in an IDF bombing of a tent in Khan Younis; a man and four children slain in another strike on a tent in Deir al-Balah; and at least six people who died when a coffee shop near the Bureij refugee camp was hit.
The ministry said Saturday that at least 49 Palestinians were killed during the preceding 24 hours, including 22 members of the al-Khour family who were sheltering in their Gaza City home when it was bombed.
The IDF said the strike targeted a Hamas militant. Israel's military relaxed rules of engagement after the October 7, 2023 attack to allow an unlimited number of civilians to be killed when targeting a single Hamas member, no matter how low-ranking.
Saed al-Khour, who is grieving the loss of his family, refuted Israel's claim, telling The Associated Press that "there is no one from the resistance" among the victims.
"We have been pulling out the remains of children, women, and elderly people," al-Khour added.
Israel's U.S.-backed 569-day assault on Gaza has left at least 183,800 Palestinians dead, injured, or missing. Nearly all of Gaza's more than 2 million people have been forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened amid a "complete siege" that is cited in an International Court of Justice genocide case against Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are also fugitives from the International Criminal Court, which issued arrest warrants for the pair last year.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces unleashed a wave of bombing attacks in Lebanon in what critics called a blatant violation of a November cease-fire agreement with the resistance group Hezbollah. The IDF bombed targets in southern Lebanon and in suburbs of the capital city of Beirut.
The IDF, which said it warned residents ahead of the Beirut airstrike, claimed it attacked "an infrastructure where precision missiles" were being stored by Hezbollah, without providing any supporting evidence.
Israel says it will continue its assault and siege on Gaza until Hamas releases the two dozen Israeli and other hostages it has imprisoned since October 2023. Hamas counters that it will only free the hostages in an exchange for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, a complete withdrawal of IDF troops from Gaza, and a new cease-fire agreement. Israel unilaterally broke a January cease-fire last month.
A senior Hamas delegation left Cairo late Saturday following days of talks regarding a possible deal for a multi-year truce and the release of all remaining hostages. The head of Israel's Mossad spy agency was also in Qatar earlier this week for separate cease-fire talks. Qatari mediators said they believed there has been "some progress" in both sides' willingness to reach an agreement.
United Nations agencies and international humanitarian groups—many of which have accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war—have warned in recent days of the imminent risk of renewed famine in Gaza as food stocks run out.
"Children in Gaza are starving," the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East
said on social media Sunday. "The government of Israel continues to block the entry of food and other basics. [This is a] man-made and politically motivated starvation."
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