After Biden call, Egyptian president to restore aid flow to Gaza - JNS.org
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“This will help save lives,” the White House stated in its readout of the call.

(May 24, 2024 / JNS)

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi agreed to restore the flow of aid to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip during a telephone call with U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday.

Egypt halted U.N. aid deliveries into the southern city of Rafah after the Israeli military took control of the Gazan side of the Egypt-Gaza border. In Friday’s call, el-Sisi agreed to let the aid flow through Israel’s Kerem Shalom crossing near the Egyptian border.

“President Biden welcomed the commitment from President el-Sisi to permit the flow of U.N.-provided humanitarian assistance from Egypt through the Kerem Shalom crossing on a provisional basis for onward distribution throughout Gaza,” the White House stated in its readout of the call. “This will help save lives.”

The Egyptian readout of the call said that the deliveries would consist of “humanitarian aid and fuel” and would continue “temporarily until a legal mechanism is reached to reoperate the Rafah crossing from the Palestinian side.”

  • FlowVoid@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    1 month ago

    Rafah is the only Gazan border crossing that isn’t controlled by Israel

    Israel and Egypt signed a peace treaty in 1982, which saw the Jewish state withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula that it had captured from Egypt in 1967.

    Israel then opened the Rafah crossing, which it controlled until it withdrew from Gaza in 2005. Between then and Hamas’ takeover of Gaza in 2007, the crossing was controlled by the European Union, which worked closely with Egyptian officials.

    Between 2005 and 2007, some 450,000 passengers used the crossing with an average of about 1,500 people per day.

    The Rafah crossing has since been tightly controlled, with limited access and lengthy bureaucratic and security processes required of Palestinians wishing to cross into Egypt.

    Travelers require an exit permit from Hamas and an entry permit from Egypt

    • bamboo@lemm.eeEnglish
      2·
      1 month ago

      Normally this would be correct, but recently Israel took over the Palestine side of the crossing as part of their invasion of Rafah. The first thing they did while taking over was shut down aid deliveries.

      • FlowVoid@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        1 month ago

        That’s true, I was addressing the claim that Egypt lost control of the crossing after their peace deal with Israel.

        Israel and Egypt currently share control of the crossing. And until recently, Egypt refused to reopen the crossing. So it’s not accurate to imply that Egypt has no say in what happens, or that Biden’s intervention was irrelevant.