Israel closes Gaza border crossings amid strikes on Iran

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The Hill's Headlines — Sunday, March 1, 2026

The Hill's Headlines — Sunday, March 1, 2026

The Israeli government closed all border crossings into the Gaza Strip on Saturday, as the U.S. and Israel launch strikes against Iran. 

Israel’s Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) wrote on the social platform X that the closure of the crossings is part of “several necessary security adjustments” amid the joint attacks on Iran, which began early Saturday morning. Among the crossings now closed is the Rafah Crossing, which connects Egypt and Gaza and is the sole border between the enclave and a country other than Israel. 

COGAT noted that “the rotation of humanitarian personnel is postponed” with the border closures but claimed that the moves “will have no impact on the humanitarian situation” in Gaza. The agency said that the “existing stock” of food “is expected to suffice for an extended period.”

While the United Nations reported in January that humanitarian organizations had provided 100 percent of basic food needs to individuals in the enclave for the first time since October 2023, as of December, more than three-fourths of Gaza’s population face crisis levels of food insecurity, according to the World Food Program USA.

Humanitarian organizations surged aid into Gaza after Israel and Hamas agreed to a U.S.-brokered ceasefire in October, roughly two years after war began with Hamas’s attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. But the peace plan remains tentative, with Israel launching strikes into Gaza since then and Hamas yet to disarm.

Chef José Andrés, the founder of nonprofit World Central Kitchen, decried the border closures and said his organization “will run out of food this week” if they persist. In April 2024, an Israeli strike killed six World Central Kitchen workers and their Palestinian driver in Gaza.

“We are cooking [1 million] hot meals every day,” Andrés wrote on the social platform X. “We need food deliveries every single day to feed hungry families who are not part of this war. All the NGOs in Gaza need more food, medicine, medical equipment, fuel, tents, personal care every day. 

“We cannot wait … let the humanitarian trucks go through today!”

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