The Rafah crossing has been operating for two days, managed in cooperation with Palestinian Authority officials, contrary to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statements. Among the PA officials involved in running the crossing are senior Fatah official who manage it in cooperation with a special European force and with Egyptian security officials who assist in securing the place from Islamist Salafi terrorist elements. Israel is involved for the time being with approving those who cross it, and only in one direction: out of Gaza.
Contrary to denials from Netanyahu’s office, the official spokesman for the Palestinian Authority police, Louy Izriqat, told Ynet and Yedioth Ahronoth Sunday that Fares a-Rifi has been appointed to manage the police station at the Rafah Crossing, which opened Sunday. Rifi, a resident of Gaza City, was a police officer in the central governorates of the Gaza Strip on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, and holds a bachelor’s degree in law and an advanced degree in police science from the Police College in Yemen. He is considered an active Fatah figure in the Gaza Strip.
His brother congratulated him in a post: “The legitimate Palestinian police are the ones who will control and maintain security at the Rafah crossing under the command of Fares a-Rifi.” The Palestinian force stationed there includes seven policemen and two policewomen, all of whom previously worked on behalf of the PA at the border crossings of the Gaza Strip, and are now returning to work in the same role.
The political sensitivity of the issue in Israel is clear to everyone, which is why Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas asked his people not to be interviewed. However, Ynet and Yedioth Ahronoth learned that for many weeks now PA officials, in cooperation with Egyptian intelligence, have been in feverish contact with IDF officials, the Civil Administration, the Coordinator of Government Activities, and the Shin Bet in Cairo to prepare the cooperation that led to the opening of the Rafah crossing.
The Palestinian Authority began preparations to control the crossing over the past month. The head of the Palestinian Authority’s crossings authority Nazmi Mohanna, a resident of Jericho, and the deputy director general of the PA’s Ministry of Civil Affairs Ayman Qandil, a Ramallah resident, have been intensively attending meetings with security officials in Egypt in order to open and manage the Rafah crossing.
IDF forces enter the Rafah Crossing in May
(צילום: דובר צה”ל)
Mahmoud al-Habbash, an adviser to Abbas, said that “the Rafah crossing will be managed according to the 2005 agreement, that’s all.” The ‘crossings agreement’ concluded between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in 2005 stipulates that the Rafah crossing will be managed by the Palestinian Authority, in cooperation with Egypt, and under the supervision of a force from the European Union. According to a senior Palestinian official, the PA was instructed not to mention the new management and procedures at the Rafah crossing so as not to upset Israel.
The sensitivity of operating the crossing in cooperation with the Palestinian Authority is twofold, and stems from internal political reasons in Israel. This is one of the internal coalition reasons why the Israeli government and its leader delayed the deal for at least six months, and some argue since the collapse of the previous deal.
The first reason: The IDF and security officials have claimed over the past year that there can be no military victory that does not include Israeli rule over all of Gaza, without creating an alternative to Hamas. The professional consensus was that a “day after” solution must be promoted in the Strip to prevent Hamas rule and that it must include the PA, with international financial and manpower reinforcements. Netanyahu, whether this was his own opinion or fear of the coalition falling apart, claimed that he would not give the Palestinian Authority any foothold, thereby effectively thwarting discussions about the day after.
The second reason: As part of the obstacles Netanyahu added to his demands in the deal after the parties were very close to an agreement, he demanded control of the Rafah crossing. “I and one other minister (Ron Dermer) were the only ones in the war cabinet who prevented the Palestinian Authority from controlling the Rafah Crossing,” he said on one occasion. “We will not allow the Palestinian Authority to control the Gaza Strip, and we are working to thwart any of its control.” In the hasty press conference he convened in September, after the murder of the six hostages in the Tel a-Sultan tunnel and to explain why he opposed the deal, Netanyahu called the Rafah Crossing and the Philadelphi Corridor “Hamas’ oxygen pipeline,” and declared that Israel would not withdraw from them.
The Rafah crossing did not appear to interest Netanyahu until he raised it as one of the obstacles to the deal. On the morning of July 3, intelligence sources estimated that Hamas was going to give a relatively positive answer, though with many more difficulties and insistences. By the evening, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich already knew that “I would not be surprised if suddenly, after months of refusal, Sinwar responds positively to the offer he received for the deal.” This is to say that everything must be done to prevent the deal, which Israel had proposed.
The next day, Sinwar did give the same relatively positive answer that was received by large parts of the negotiating team who thought there was a chance of a breakthrough. Then, suddenly, on July 11, in Netanyahu’s speech at the end of an officers’ course at the 1st Battalion, nine months after the outbreak of the war, the Israeli presence at the crossing and at Netzarim is mentioned as a condition that Israel will not give up. “We will not allow weapons smuggling to Hamas from Egypt, first and foremost through Israeli control of the Philadelphia route and the Rafah crossing,” he said. Six months passed, during which many hostages and soldiers died, and a deal was concluded in which Netanyahu withdrew from almost all of the conditions that had sabotaged the previous deal.
On January 22, the Arabi-language, London-based Saudi newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat reported that an agreement had been reached on the mechanism for controlling the Rafah crossing – which the IDF took over in May. According to a source in the joint cease-fire monitoring team, “the parties reached an agreement regarding the management of the crossing on the Palestinian side. It was agreed that it would be managed by the Palestinian Authority, under international supervision and monitoring by the UN.” The Prime Minister’s Office denied this: “The report is not true despite the Palestinian Authority’s attempts to create a false impression that it controls the crossing. According to the agreement, IDF forces surround the crossing and no one passes through it without prior control, supervision and approval from the IDF and the Shin Bet.”
The statement also said that the “technical management within the crossing is carried out by non-Hamas Gazans, who are vetted by the Shin Bet, and who have been managing civil services in the Strip since the beginning of the war, such as electricity, water, and sewage. Their work is supervised by the international force EUBAM.”
This formulation denies without actually denying the main point and the documents have not been made public.
The appendix to the main agreement states in Article 5 that “the Rafah Crossing will be ready for the transfer of civilians and wounded after the release of all women (civilians and soldiers). Israel will work to prepare the crossing as soon as possible after the signing of the agreement.” The agreement explicitly states that the forces will only “redeploy around the Rafah Crossing in accordance with the attached maps.” In other words, the IDF and Israel will not be present at the crossing itself.
In addition, it was stated that “50 wounded fighters will be allowed to cross daily, accompanied by three people. Each crossing will require Israeli and Egyptian approval.” It also stated that “the crossing will be activated in accordance with the discussions that took place with Egypt in August 2024.” The words “50 wounded fighters” refer to 50 Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists who will leave for Egypt daily, accompanied by three additional people who may also be Hamas members.
The agreement stipulates that the lists of those who are to pass, provided by the Hamas-run Palestinian Health Ministry, will be given the day before to Egypt and Israel, who will have to approve them. It is likely that Israel will not let senior Hamas figures leave, but will let everyone else. Fifty Hamas members a day is a lot, even if it is only for the first phase of the cease-fire.
At the moment, this is a one-way passage: only from Gaza to Egypt, and not the other way around. Therefore, at least for now, from Israel’s perspective a Hamas member who leaves cannot return according to a vague agreement. Israel says that this matter should be discussed as part of the second phase of the deal. It is still unclear how the mediating countries will approach the matter and whether they will also demand the opening of the other direction.
The Rafah Crossing was destroyed and burned in the fighting that Israel waged when it entered it in early May. The crossing facilities are unusable, so the mediators, together with the PA, had to bring in several temporary structures to carry out the checks and procedures for leaving Gaza. All of this is happening in the meantime in a way that is hidden from the Israeli public due to political reasons, but as stated in the agreement between Israel and Hamas. But the big question is how long the agreement will last, and whether the parties will be able to reach an agreement on the second phase.
Negotiations regarding the second phase of the cease-fire and hostage release deal are scheduled to begin no later than Sunday, 16 days after the cease-fire came into effect. Senior officials in Israel and the mediating countries expressed serious concern on Sunday that it will blow up. Some fear that in between two weeks and a month Israel will announce that the negotiations – within the framework of which the remaining living hostages are supposed to return and the IDF is supposed to withdraw from the Strip – have run aground and are in fact hopeless because Muhammad Sinwar is making unreasonable demands.
These words were echoed over the weekend in a report through channels which says that “an understanding has formed” in Israel that Hamas will not return the remaining live hostages and therefore Israel will be forced to return to war. Military sources, including those whose work is related to the negotiating team, said that Israel does not have such information.
“Basically, nothing is coming together,” says a senior Israeli official. “To conclude and finalize the Saudi deal, which will also include an international solution for Gaza and allow Netanyahu to risk dissolving the government, it will take no less than four months. To sign a second phase of the deal in the immediate term, Netanyahu will have to take a risk and take it without all the ‘goodies’ of a Saudi normalization deal. And that, he will tell Trump, is too big a risk. That’s why the deal is destined to explode.”
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