CAIRO (AP) — A dozen Palestinian returnees were allowed into Gaza from Egypt late Monday after the long-awaited reopening of the Rafah border crossing was marred by delays. Their arrival came hours after a small group of medical evacuees was ferried from the territory into Egypt.
The reopening of the crossing marked a key step in the Israel-Hamas ceasefire but mostly a symbolic one, with few people allowed to travel and no goods allowed to pass through.
The limitations were apparent Monday as crossings fell well short of the 50 people officials had said would be allowed to move in each direction.
About 20,000 Palestinian children and adults needing medical care hope to leave the devastated territory via the crossing, according to Gaza health officials. Thousands of other Palestinians outside the territory hope to enter and return home.
The crossing had been closed since Israeli troops seized it in May 2024. The number of travelers is expected to increase over time if the system is successful. Israel has said it and Egypt will vet people for exit and entry.
Ambulances queued for hours at the border before ferrying patients into Egypt, the state-run Al-Qahera News satellite television channel showed. Just before midnight, a bus arrived in Gaza carrying Palestinian returnees who had fled the fighting early in the war. As the vehicle entered the compound of a hospital in Khan Younis, a girl wearing barrettes and an older woman stood just inside the front door, waving to relatives anxious for their return.
Before the war, Rafah was the main crossing for people moving in and out of Gaza. The territory’s handful of other crossings are all shared with Israel. Under the terms of the ceasefire, which went into effect in October, Israel’s military controls the area between the Rafah crossing and the zone where most Palestinians live.
Violence continued across the coastal territory Monday. Gaza hospital officials said an Israeli navy ship had fired on a tent camp, killing a 3-year-old Palestinian boy. Israel’s military said it was looking into the incident.
Rajaa Abu Mustafa stood outside a Gaza hospital where her 17-year-old son Mohamed awaited evacuation. He was blinded by a shot to the eye last year as he joined desperate Palestinians seeking food from aid trucks outside the southern city of Khan Younis.
“The health ministry called and told us that we will travel to Egypt for (his) treatment,” she said.
About 150 hospitals across Egypt are ready to receive patients evacuated from Gaza through Rafah, authorities said. But the isolated crossing is separated from Cairo by a six-hour drive. The Egyptian Red Crescent said it has readied “safe spaces” on the Egyptian side of the border to support those evacuated.
More than 10,000 patients have been evacuated from Gaza since the war began, according to the World Health Organization. But Israel’s seizure of the Rafah crossing brought the pace of evacuations to a crawl, with an average of 17 patients a week leaving for most of the time since.
Israel has banned sending patients to hospitals in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem since the war began, cutting off what was previously the main outlet for Palestinians needing medical treatment unavailable in Gaza.
U.N. officials on Monday called on other countries to take in more patients from Gaza “so that everyone receives the treatment they need.”
With the crossing reopened, Gaza residents looked forward to the return of family members who fled earlier in the war.
“This time it's real,” said Iman Rashwan, anticipating the arrival of her mother and sister. They left Gaza a year ago when her mother's heart condition worsened and she was referred for treatment in Egypt.
“They called us yesterday and said they received news that they will leave,” Rashwan said. “We have been waiting for it for too long.”
The Rafah crossing will be supervised by European Union border patrol agents with a small Palestinian presence. Historically, Israel and Egypt have vetted Palestinians applying to cross. Fearing that Israel could use the crossing to push Palestinians out of the enclave, Egypt has repeatedly said it must be open for them to enter and exit Gaza.
A 3-year-old Palestinian was killed when Israel's navy hit tents sheltering displaced people in Khan Younis, Palestinian hospital authorities said. According to Nasser hospital, which received the body, the attack happened in Muwasi, a tent camp area on Gaza’s coast.
Also on Monday, Israel's military said it killed four Palestinians in northern Gaza who approached troops near the line marking Israeli-controlled territory, “posing an imminent threat to them.”
More than 520 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since the ceasefire went into effect on Oct. 10, according to Gaza's health ministry. They are among the over 71,800 Palestinians killed since the start of the war, according to the ministry, which does not say how many were fighters or civilians.
The ministry, part of Gaza's Hamas-led government, keeps detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts.
Israel had said seizing the Rafah crossing in May 2024 was part of efforts to combat arms-smuggling by the Hamas militant group. The crossing was briefly opened for the evacuation of medical patients during a ceasefire in early 2025.
Israel had resisted reopening the Rafah crossing, but the recovery of the remains of the last hostage in Gaza cleared the way to move forward.
The reopening is seen as a key step as the U.S.-brokered ceasefire agreement moves into its second phase.
The truce halted more than two years of war between Israel and Hamas that began with the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Its first phase called for the exchange of all hostages held in Gaza for hundreds of Palestinians held by Israel, an increase in badly needed humanitarian aid and a partial pullback of Israeli troops.
The second phase of the ceasefire deal is more complicated. It calls for installing the new Palestinian committee to govern Gaza, deploying an international security force, disarming Hamas and taking steps to begin rebuilding.
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Federman reported from Jerusalem. Associated Press journalists Wafaa Shurafa in Khan Younis, Gaza and Julia Frankel in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
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Find more of AP’s coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
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This story has been corrected to show that the latest figure from Gaza's Health Ministry says 71,800 Palestinians have been killed.
