Kerem Shalom border crossing

Based on Wikipedia: Kerem Shalom border crossing

A narrow strip of asphalt, barely four hundred meters wide, has become one of the most consequential pieces of infrastructure on Earth. Through this bottleneck flows the fate of over two million people. The Kerem Shalom border crossing—whose Hebrew name translates poetically to "Vineyard of Peace"—sits at a geographic oddity: the precise point where three territories meet. Gaza touches Israel here, and Gaza touches Egypt, creating a junction that has made this crossing the primary lifeline for goods entering the besieged coastal enclave.

The Arabic name tells a different story. Palestinians call it Karem Abu Salem, after a family, not a vineyard. Names matter in this part of the world.

The Geography of a Chokepoint

To understand why Kerem Shalom matters, you need to visualize Gaza's predicament. The Gaza Strip is a sliver of land roughly the size of Philadelphia, home to one of the densest populations on the planet. It has only a handful of ways to connect with the outside world: a border with Egypt to the south, a border with Israel to the north and east, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Israel controls the sea access through a naval blockade. Egypt's Rafah crossing handles some passenger traffic but limited goods. That leaves Kerem Shalom as the primary artery for everything from food and medicine to construction materials and fuel.

The crossing itself is divided by a four-hundred-meter buffer zone—a no-man's-land where trucks from one side drop their cargo, and trucks from the other side pick it up. The Israeli and Palestinian sides never directly meet. Goods are transferred, inspected, and transferred again.

On the Palestinian side, operations are run by two families who hold a franchise from the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, though Hamas—which has governed Gaza since seizing control in 2007—also has a say. This dual authority creates its own complications. The Ministry of Commerce and Industry in Ramallah coordinates with Israel, even though Hamas and the Palestinian Authority are political rivals, and even though Israel and Hamas are at war. Bureaucracy, it turns out, sometimes transcends conflict.

What a Crossing Looks Like

In the early 2010s, Israel invested seventy-five million shekels—roughly twenty million dollars—to upgrade Kerem Shalom. The expanded facility can theoretically handle four hundred fifty trucks per day. That number is crucial for understanding the news stories you hear about Gaza: when reports say "only fifty trucks entered today," they're measuring against a capacity nearly ten times higher.

The Israeli side was once managed by the Israel Airports Authority, an odd choice for a land crossing until you remember that airport security involves exactly the kind of intensive inspection Gaza-bound goods require. Today, the crossing falls under the Ministry of Defense's Crossings Administration, reflecting its status as a security rather than commercial operation.

Every truck is inspected. X-ray scanners—donated by the Netherlands in late 2023—now supplement manual searches. Israel maintains a list of prohibited items: weapons obviously, but also "dual-use goods." This category covers products that have legitimate civilian purposes but could theoretically be repurposed for military use. The definition is controversial. At various times, the list has included items like cement, pipes, and fertilizer—essential for reconstruction and agriculture, but also ingredients for tunnels and explosives.

The Tunnel Problem

Beneath the border crossing lies another transportation network entirely: tunnels. For years, a maze of underground passages connected Gaza to Egypt, used for smuggling everything from consumer goods to weapons. Some tunnels were remarkably sophisticated, featuring rail systems, electricity, and ventilation.

The tunnels served multiple purposes. Hamas used them to bring in weapons and militants. But ordinary Gazans also used them to evade the taxes Hamas imposed on goods entering through official crossings. When you're buying cooking oil or diapers at inflated prices because a government you didn't vote for takes a cut, an underground marketplace starts looking attractive.

Egypt tolerated the tunnels when Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood served as president—the Brotherhood has ideological ties to Hamas. But after the Egyptian military deposed Morsi in 2013, the new government methodically destroyed hundreds of tunnels in 2014 and 2015, flooding them, bombing them, or simply bulldozing the buildings above them.

The tunnels crossing into Israel presented a different kind of threat. In January 2018, Israeli Air Force planes demolished what they called a "terror tunnel" that passed directly under the Kerem Shalom crossing. The tunnel started nine hundred meters inside Gaza and extended one hundred eighty meters into Israel, passing beneath the gas pipeline that connects Egypt to Gaza. The implications of that route—a tunnel running under both a major border crossing and critical energy infrastructure—required no elaboration.

Attacks and Closures

The crossing has been a target repeatedly.

The most famous incident occurred in June 2006, when Palestinian militants tunneled from Gaza into Israel near Kerem Shalom and captured an Israeli soldier named Gilad Shalit. Two other soldiers died in the raid. Shalit would remain a prisoner for more than five years, finally freed in October 2011 in exchange for over one thousand Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. The lopsided ratio—one thousand for one—reflected both Shalit's symbolic importance and the value Palestinian factions placed on their imprisoned members.

In April 2008, suicide bombers attacked the crossing with explosives-laden vehicles. According to the Israeli Defense Forces, the attack involved two jeeps and an armored personnel carrier. Two vehicles detonated, killing three bombers and wounding thirteen Israeli soldiers, who were protected from more serious injuries by the crossing's fortifications. Hamas claimed responsibility. Their spokesman called it "a gift for the people under siege."

August 2012 brought an attack from an unexpected direction: Egypt. Gunmen who had killed sixteen Egyptian police officers hijacked armored vehicles and rammed the crossing. One jeep exploded at the checkpoint; the Israeli Air Force destroyed the other before it could reach its target.

In May 2018, Palestinian protesters set parts of the crossing on fire three times, damaging fuel pipelines and conveyor belts. Israel closed the facility for assessment before reopening. Two months later, after months of incendiary kites and balloons launched from Gaza caused fires in Israeli farmland, Israel shut Kerem Shalom to all but humanitarian deliveries. The closure lasted until mid-August, when a tentative calm took hold.

This pattern—attack, closure, reopening—repeated itself. March 2019 saw closures after rocket fire, with Egyptian mediators eventually brokering a reopening. May 2023 brought another round, with Palestinian Islamic Jihad launching rockets at both Kerem Shalom and the Erez crossing to the north during what Israel called Operation Shield and Arrow.

In September 2023, just weeks before everything would change, Israeli inspectors found several kilograms of high-quality explosives hidden in a clothing shipment. The crossing closed, then reopened for goods and fuel while Erez remained shuttered.

October 7 and Its Aftermath

Before October 7, 2023, roughly five hundred aid trucks passed through Kerem Shalom daily. That number is important context for understanding what came next.

On that day—the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah—Hamas launched a coordinated assault across multiple points on the Gaza-Israel border. Kerem Shalom was among the targets, though the crossing had been scheduled to close for the holiday except for humanitarian and medical supplies. The attack killed over a thousand Israelis and resulted in approximately two hundred fifty hostages taken into Gaza. It was the deadliest day for Jewish people since the Holocaust.

Israel's response included a complete siege. Kerem Shalom closed. As Israeli military operations intensified and the humanitarian situation in Gaza deteriorated, international pressure mounted to allow aid through.

The crossing reopened for United Nations aid trucks on December 17, 2023, nearly ten weeks later. The terms allowed one hundred trucks daily through Kerem Shalom, supplementing one hundred trucks through Rafah—a combined flow less than half the pre-war normal. The reopening came as part of negotiations around hostage-for-prisoner exchanges.

Even this reduced flow faced obstacles. Israeli protesters, arguing that aid was helping Hamas survive and endangering Israeli soldiers, repeatedly blocked the crossing. On May 5, 2024, after a rocket attack on an Israeli military base, the crossing closed again. It reopened three days later for humanitarian aid only.

The Looting Crisis

By late 2024, a new problem had emerged: the aid that did enter Gaza often never reached its intended recipients.

On November 16, 2024, armed gangs raided a convoy of one hundred nine United Nations trucks near Israeli military positions at Kerem Shalom. They looted ninety-eight of them—ninety percent of the convoy. The attackers threw grenades and held drivers at gunpoint, forcing them to unload. A UN memo noted that the perpetrators may have had "protection" from Israeli forces, and that a gang leader had established what looked like a "military-like compound" in an area controlled and patrolled by the Israel Defense Forces.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency, known as UNRWA, described it as one of the worst such incidents. The situation raised uncomfortable questions about who benefits from humanitarian chaos, and who might have reasons to allow or even facilitate it.

The 2025 Shutdown and Ceasefire

On March 2, 2025, Israel stopped all truck deliveries through Kerem Shalom. The closure lasted more than two months. On May 19, five trucks were allowed through—the first since March.

A ceasefire between Hamas and Israel took effect on October 10, 2025. That day, a UN spokesperson announced that fuel, medical supplies, and essential goods had begun entering through the crossing. Two days later, Israel's deputy foreign minister claimed that aid had been flowing even before the ceasefire, accusing some organizations of using the humanitarian situation as "a political tool against Israel." Aid agencies countered that they still lacked permission to operate and that no significant increase in shipments had actually occurred.

The truth, as is often the case at Kerem Shalom, probably lies somewhere in the contested space between these accounts.

A Crossing and Its Contradictions

Kerem Shalom embodies contradictions that define the broader conflict. Its Hebrew name invokes peace and vineyards; its history includes suicide bombings and tunnel warfare. It is the primary channel for humanitarian aid to a population in crisis, and also a choke point whose closures create that crisis. Israel built and upgraded it; Israel also closes it. Hamas attacks it; Hamas also depends on what flows through it.

The European Union maintains a liaison office here, staffing it with monitors who receive real-time video feeds from the Rafah crossing—a vestige of a 2005 agreement that imagined Palestinians eventually controlling their own borders with international oversight. That arrangement effectively collapsed when Hamas took power in 2007. The EU monitors remain, though what exactly they're monitoring in the current environment is unclear.

Two families on the Palestinian side hold a franchise to operate their portion of the crossing. The Palestinian Authority in Ramallah coordinates with Israel, even though it hasn't governed Gaza for nearly two decades. Trucks drop cargo in a buffer zone because the two sides cannot meet face to face. X-ray machines donated by the Netherlands scan for explosives that might be hidden in humanitarian shipments.

Four hundred meters separate the Israeli and Palestinian terminals. In that space lies everything that makes this conflict so intractable: security demands and humanitarian needs, legitimate fears and collective punishment, tunnels beneath and drones above. The Vineyard of Peace has known very little peace. But it remains, stubbornly, the place where Gaza meets the outside world—one truck at a time, when it's open.