On February 2, the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt reopened for the first time since May 2024, allowing a limited number of people to move in both directions. The crossing had effectively been shut after Israeli forces took control of the Palestinian side, turning what had been Gaza's main external gateway into a sealed perimeter.
Scenes at the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis captured Palestinians queuing for passage and ambulances stationed on the Egyptian side, underscoring the reopening's immediate focus: medical evacuations and a narrow flow of staff and essential personnel. For civilians who have relied on Rafah for cross-border travel and for aid organizations that once channeled bulk humanitarian consignments through the terminal, even a modest reopening provides a crucial, if partial, relief valve.
Rafah's closure contributed to a severe bottleneck in the delivery of food, fuel, medicine and essential supplies across Gaza, and to the isolation of patients needing specialized treatment outside the territory. Reopening the crossing therefore has both practical and symbolic significance: it can permit urgent medical transfers and limited staff movement, while signalling responsiveness to international pressure over civilian suffering.
Yet the access is tightly circumscribed. The crossing is operating under constraints imposed by the security environment, physical damage to infrastructure and the need for coordinated procedures between Egyptian, Palestinian and Israeli authorities. Those constraints mean that expectations for a rapid restoration of regular commercial or large-scale humanitarian convoys should be tempered; a steady, predictable flow will require separate agreements on vetting, guarantees of safe transit and logistics such as fuel and storage.
The move also carries diplomatic weight. Egypt must balance domestic security concerns and the political sensitivities of hosting large numbers of Palestinians against international demands for greater humanitarian access. Israel, while permitting limited passage, retains operational control of the surrounding area—giving it leverage to calibrate any expansion of movement in line with its security priorities.
In practice, the reopening is an incremental step: it can relieve discrete humanitarian pressures and provide breathing space for hospitals and families, but it falls short of addressing Gaza's systemic shortages. The success of this opening will be judged not by the act itself, but by whether it becomes the basis for predictable, scaled-up humanitarian corridors, and whether international actors can secure the logistical and political conditions needed for sustained access.