Rafah Border Crossing
Based on Wikipedia: Rafah Border Crossing
A Gate That Opens and Closes on Two Million Lives
Imagine living in a place where your ability to leave—to see a doctor abroad, to attend your sister's wedding, to study at a university—depends entirely on whether a single gate happens to be open that day. For the roughly two million people in the Gaza Strip, this is not a thought experiment. It is daily life. And that gate has a name: the Rafah Border Crossing.
Rafah is Gaza's only connection to a country other than Israel. It links the southern edge of the Gaza Strip to Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, and its status—open, closed, or somewhere in the bureaucratic limbo between—has shaped the lives of Gazans for decades.
The crossing's history reads like a microcosm of the entire Israeli-Palestinian conflict: brief moments of hope punctuated by closures, violence, and the steady tightening of restrictions. Understanding Rafah means understanding how a simple border checkpoint became one of the most politically fraught pieces of real estate on Earth.
How a City Got Cut in Half
The story begins more than a century ago. In 1906, the Ottoman Empire and Britain drew a line from Taba to Rafah, separating Ottoman-ruled Palestine from British-ruled Egypt. That line would prove remarkably durable, outlasting both empires.
For much of the twentieth century, however, the border barely mattered. From 1948 to 1967, Egypt administered Gaza, so there was no meaningful separation between the two territories. Gazans and Egyptians moved freely across what was, in practical terms, a single country.
Everything changed in 1967. Israel's stunning victory in the Six-Day War brought both Gaza and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula under Israeli military occupation. Suddenly, the old Ottoman-British line became a boundary between two occupied territories controlled by the same power.
The next transformation came with peace. The 1979 Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt returned the Sinai to Egyptian sovereignty. But this created a problem: the city of Rafah straddled the border. When Israel withdrew from Sinai in 1982, Rafah was literally split in two. Families who had lived as neighbors found themselves separated by barbed wire, their homes now in different countries.
A hundred-meter-wide strip of land called the Philadelphi Corridor became a buffer zone between Gaza and Egypt. The name sounds almost pleasant, evoking the City of Brotherly Love. The reality was anything but.
A Brief Window of Palestinian Control
For years, Israel controlled the Rafah crossing directly. Israeli soldiers decided who could leave Gaza and who could not, what goods could enter, and which trucks would wait for hours at the checkpoint.
In 2005, something remarkable happened. Israel announced its unilateral disengagement from Gaza, withdrawing its settlers and soldiers. For the first time, Palestinians would have partial control over an international border.
The arrangement was complex—deliberately so. Under the Agreement on Movement and Access, signed in November 2005, the Palestinian Authority would administer the Gaza side of the crossing. But they would not do so alone. The European Union Border Assistance Mission, known by its acronym EUBAM Rafah, would monitor operations. Israel maintained video surveillance from a nearby base and retained the power to dispute the entry of any individual. Egypt controlled its own side.
It was sovereignty with an asterisk. But it was something.
On November 26, 2005, the crossing opened under this new system. The results were encouraging. About 1,320 people passed through each day. Palestinians with proper identification could travel to Egypt and, from there, to the wider world. The crossing offered a glimpse of what normal life might look like.
This period would last exactly seven months.
The Agreement Unravels
In January 2006, Hamas won the Palestinian legislative elections. The Islamist movement, which Israel and Western governments classified as a terrorist organization, now led the Palestinian Authority.
The Rafah crossing continued to function, but cracks appeared. European monitors noticed Hamas representatives transporting large sums of cash across the border—often exceeding a million dollars per transfer. The monitors identified these shipments but lacked the authority to stop them. Several Hamas members whom Israel had previously expelled crossed back into Gaza through Rafah, prompting angry Israeli protests.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon warned that all Gaza border crossings would be closed if security deteriorated further. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak promised enhanced security. But Palestinian authorities insisted that any Palestinian citizen had the right to pass through Rafah.
The tensions escalated.
On June 25, 2006, Palestinian militants attacked the Kerem Shalom crossing—a different checkpoint where Gaza, Israel, and Egypt meet—and captured an Israeli soldier named Gilad Shalit. Israel responded by closing Rafah, citing security concerns.
The crossing would remain closed for 265 of the next twelve months.
The Hamas Takeover and Total Closure
June 2007 marked the point of no return. Hamas and Fatah, the two major Palestinian factions, had been locked in a power struggle since the election. That month, the conflict erupted into open warfare in Gaza's streets. Hamas emerged victorious, seizing complete control of the territory.
The consequences were immediate and far-reaching.
Israel announced it was suspending the Crossings Agreement entirely. The Palestinian Authority personnel trained to operate Rafah could no longer access the site—Hamas controlled it now. The European monitors withdrew, citing their policy of non-engagement with Hamas. Egypt, unwilling to operate the crossing without the agreed-upon arrangements, shut its side.
What followed was the blockade. Israel sealed Gaza's borders, controlling what entered by land, sea, and air. Egypt cooperated, keeping Rafah closed except for rare humanitarian openings. The goal, Israeli officials stated, was to pressure Hamas and prevent weapons smuggling. The effect was to trap an entire population.
Gaza has sometimes been called the world's largest open-air prison. The Rafah crossing is its main gate, and after 2007, that gate was almost always locked.
The Tunnels: When the Gate Closes, People Dig
Humans are remarkably adaptable creatures. When the official crossing closed, an underground economy emerged.
Gazans began digging tunnels under the Philadelphi Corridor. Some were simple shafts for smuggling cigarettes and consumer goods. Others grew sophisticated enough to transport cars, livestock, and construction materials. At the tunnel economy's peak, hundreds of passages connected Gaza to Egypt, employing thousands of workers.
The tunnels were dangerous—cave-ins killed dozens of diggers—and they enriched Hamas, which taxed the underground trade. But they also kept Gaza functioning when the official channels would not. Fuel, medicine, and food flowed through the tunnels when the crossing above stayed shut.
This was not what anyone had envisioned when they drew up the Agreement on Movement and Access. But it was the predictable result of sealing a population of two million people inside a strip of land roughly the size of Detroit.
Breaking Through: The 2008 Border Breach
In January 2008, Israel imposed a total closure on all crossings into Gaza. No food. No fuel. No medicine. The stated reason was rocket fire from Gaza into Israel. The effect was humanitarian crisis.
On January 22, Hamas demonstrators tried to force open the Rafah crossing. Egyptian police beat them back. Gunfire erupted.
That night, Hamas took a different approach. They used explosives to demolish two hundred meters of the metal border wall.
What happened next was extraordinary. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians—estimates range from 200,000 to 700,000—poured into Egypt. They came to buy things: food, fuel, cigarettes, shoes, furniture, car parts, generators. They came because the crossing would not open, so they made their own opening.
The breach lasted less than two weeks. On February 3, Egypt closed the border again, allowing only those returning home to cross. The wall was rebuilt. The tunnels continued. Normal life remained elsewhere.
The Arab Spring Moment
The 2011 Egyptian revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak briefly seemed to change everything.
Mubarak had cooperated closely with Israel on the Gaza blockade. His government viewed Hamas—an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mubarak's domestic political enemy—with deep suspicion. Keeping Rafah closed served both Israeli security concerns and Egyptian political interests.
The revolution brought new leadership and new policies. In April 2011, Egypt brokered a reconciliation agreement between Hamas and Fatah. On May 28, Egypt announced that the Rafah crossing would open permanently.
The restrictions eased dramatically. Men between eighteen and forty still needed visas, but others could cross with just a travel permit. In the first five hours after the reopening, 340 people passed through. For the first time since 2007, Hamas police staffed the Palestinian side—something the Mubarak government had adamantly refused to allow.
But the opening came with limits. Goods still could not pass through Rafah; only people. And within weeks, Egypt began restricting numbers again. By mid-June 2011, only a few hundred people could cross daily, while thousands waited.
The hope of the Arab Spring, at least for Gaza, proved short-lived.
The Sisi Era: Back to Closure
In July 2013, Egypt's military overthrew President Mohamed Morsi, whose Muslim Brotherhood government had maintained relatively open ties with Hamas. General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi took power and returned to the Mubarak-era approach.
The Rafah crossing closed for days. When it reopened, it operated for just four hours daily. After a violent crackdown on Morsi supporters in August 2013, Egypt declared the crossing closed indefinitely.
The pattern that emerged was grimly familiar: Rafah would open for a few days every few months, just long enough to relieve the most acute pressure, then close again. Patients needing medical care abroad waited. Students with university acceptances waited. Families separated by the border simply waited.
Egypt under Sisi proved even more aggressive than Mubarak in targeting the tunnels. The military flooded them with seawater, demolished buildings in the Egyptian half of Rafah to create a buffer zone, and sealed the underground passages that had provided Gaza's lifeline.
Who Controls the Crossing? Everyone and No One
The question of who actually controls the Rafah crossing has never had a simple answer. On paper, it belongs to the Palestinians and Egyptians, with European monitoring and Israeli oversight. In practice, it has been a site of competing authorities, each with a veto.
Israel, though it withdrew from Gaza in 2005, retained enormous influence. Under a 2007 agreement with Egypt, any imports through Rafah required Israeli approval. Israel controlled Gaza's population registry, determining who qualified for Palestinian identification documents and thus who could legally use the crossing. And Israel could close the crossing indirectly, simply by preventing European monitors from reaching the site through Israeli-controlled territory.
Egypt controlled its own side and could open or close it at will. After 2013, Egyptian policy aligned closely with Israeli preferences.
Hamas controlled the Gaza side but was not recognized by the international community as a legitimate governing authority. The Palestinian Authority, based in the West Bank and led by Hamas's rival Fatah, claimed official responsibility but had no presence on the ground.
The European Union monitors, created to oversee Palestinian compliance with security arrangements, withdrew when conditions made their mission impossible and never returned in force.
The result was a crossing that everyone could close but no one could truly open—at least not in the sense of allowing free movement of people and goods.
The 2024 War and Israeli Seizure
The October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and Israel's subsequent military campaign in Gaza transformed the Rafah crossing once again.
On May 7, 2024, Israeli forces seized the crossing during ground operations in Rafah. For the first time since 2005, Israeli soldiers directly controlled the site. The crossing closed to all traffic.
Israel withdrew in January 2025 as part of a ceasefire agreement, only to reoccupy the crossing in March 2025 during renewed military operations. As of late 2025, the crossing remains under Israeli military control, staffed by the Israel Defense Forces' Gaza Division.
The fluctuations continue. In October 2025, trucks briefly entered Gaza through Rafah. Two days later, Israel closed the crossing indefinitely once more.
Each closure, each reopening, each military operation—the pattern repeats with different details but the same fundamental dynamic. The gate opens. The gate closes. Two million people wait to see which it will be tomorrow.
What Rafah Reveals
A border crossing is usually mundane infrastructure, as uninteresting as a highway interchange or a sewer system. People pass through. Trucks unload. Paperwork gets stamped. Life continues.
Rafah has never been mundane. It has been a pressure valve, a political symbol, a humanitarian chokepoint, and a military objective. Its status at any given moment tells you more about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than almost any other single indicator.
When Rafah opens, it signals a thaw, however temporary. When it closes, it signals crisis. When it gets bombed or seized, it signals war.
The crossing also reveals something about the nature of modern sieges. In medieval times, besieging a city meant surrounding it with soldiers. In the twenty-first century, it means controlling border crossings, population registries, and customs agreements. The effect is the same—a trapped population, unable to leave, dependent on whatever their besiegers permit to enter—but the methods are bureaucratic rather than military.
Most of all, Rafah reveals what it means to live without freedom of movement. The ability to leave a place—to travel, to flee, to simply go somewhere else—is so fundamental that most people never think about it. For Gazans, the question of whether they can leave has defined daily existence for nearly two decades.
The Rafah crossing is just a gate. But gates matter. They matter enormously when you're on the wrong side of one that refuses to open.