Egypt has announced that it will open the Rafah border crossing to injured Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. For this purpose, a field hospital will be built in the north of the Sinai Peninsula. Cairo also wants to send more aid supplies.
In view of the Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip, Egypt wants to take in and treat injured people from the Palestinian territory. The AFP news agency quotes a health official in the Egyptian city of El Arish as saying that “medical teams” will be at the Rafah border crossing today. Rafah is the Gaza Strip’s only border crossing not controlled by Israel.
The border authority of the Gaza Strip, which is ruled by the militant Islamist Hamas, said Egypt had agreed to take in 81 seriously injured people. According to the information, these are to be brought from the Palestinian territory to Egypt via Rafah.
Until now, Egypt had spoken out against accepting people from Gaza. President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi had instead suggested that Israel accommodate the Palestinians in the Negev.
Field hospital in northern Sinai
According to AFP, numerous ambulances are said to be ready on the Egyptian side of the border crossing. According to the Egyptian official, a 1,300 square meter field hospital is to be built around 15 kilometers from Rafah in the town of Sheikh Suweid in the north of the Sinai Peninsula to treat injured people from the Gaza Strip.
The US government expressed the hope that US citizens would also be able to leave the Gaza Strip. “We hope that any agreement to get people out would also create the possibility for US citizens or their families and other foreign nationals to get out,” US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in Washington.
Egypt wants to deliver more aid supplies
Meanwhile, Israel’s national security adviser Tsachi Hanegbi told journalists that his country was in discussions with Egypt about what should happen to people injured in the Gaza Strip: “Egypt is a state with which we are friends. The state is at peace with us. ” It is known that it is important for Egypt to prevent an influx of displaced Palestinians from the Gaza Strip into Egypt. But he also emphasized that there are still differences of opinion about aid deliveries to the Gaza Strip.
Most recently, a total of 66 trucks carrying relief supplies crossed the border within 24 hours. This is the largest number since deliveries began. According to the UN, 100 truckloads are needed every day to provide the 2.2 million people with essentials. Before the war began, according to the UN emergency relief office OCHA, an average of 500 trucks came to the Gaza Strip every day during the week to provide supplies to the people there.
Egypt therefore wants to send more trucks with aid supplies to the Gaza Strip. Israel, on the other hand, explains that it only has limited capacity to inspect trucks.
The decision to admit injured people from the Gaza Strip came hours after an Israeli attack on the Jabaliya refugee camp in the north of the Gaza Strip, which Israel and the Hamas-run Health Ministry said killed at least 50 people and injured 150 others.