Amid snags, EU mission tries to help frustrated Gazans traverse Rafah’s tortuous crossing |
For nearly two decades, a European Union mission meant to train and assist Palestinian border agents at the Rafah Crossing between Gaza and Egypt was little more than a shell, downsized after two years of operation to a skeleton staff after the violent 2007 Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip from the Palestinian Authority.
Today, the European Union Border Assistance Mission, or EUBAM, is active again at the crossing, the Strip’s sole conduit to the outside world and a key bellwether for the type of fragile cooperation between various actors that will characterize Gaza’s postwar recovery period.
Tasked with overseeing Palestinian Authority border and customs agents to ensure their proper management of the crossing, the EU mission has been able to watch, but not act, as hopes around the crossing’s reopening this month have been dampened by procedural issues limiting the number of Palestinians entering or leaving Gaza to even fewer than the small number agreed to by Israel and Egypt.
“The technical details, at the end of the day, can delay the whole process,” EUBAM Rafah head Nataliya Apostolova told The Times of Israel recently from her Ramat Gan office.
The crossing is seen by Israel as a strategic concern, as lax oversight could allow Hamas to smuggle weapons into Gaza, as the terror group did before the war that broke out with the October 7, 2023, Hamas invasion of southern Israel. For Gazans, its a lifeline to the outside world.
On February 2, the crossing opened for two-way pedestrian traffic for the first time since the Hamas attacks, but it has been a rocky start.
According to the agreement between Egypt and Israel on the reopening of the crossing, 50 Gazans are allowed to enter and exit Gaza each day. The 50 civilians heading into Egypt for medical care are also each allowed to take two family members to accompany them.
But in the nine days that the crossing was open from February 2 through Friday, 316 Gazans left and 312 have come in, for an average of around 35 in each direction every day, according to EUBAM and Israel Defense Forces statistics.
The outgoing traffic consisted of 125 medical patients and 191 family members, according to EUBAM.
But Palestinians who have made the journey through the crossing have complained of a feeling of imprisonment, long wait times and intrusive inspections. In at least one instance, passengers were forced to camp at the crossing overnight, with no suitable facilities, due to technical or practical holdups.
There have also been allegations of harsh treatment by Israelis forces and by an Israel-aligned armed militia during the passage between the crossing and the Hamas-controlled part of the Strip.
After 18 years away, EU border experts began ramping the Rafah mission back up during the temporary January 2025 ceasefire. Today, with the crossing reopened, the crew consists of 31 staff members, including a team to provide security for the crew of experts.
“Our task and obligation is to monitor how this operation is implemented by the Palestinian team,” Apostolova said.
Under rules governing the crossing’s reopening this month, Israel has no physical presence at the crossing, but is able to monitor who is passing through and controls the gates remotely.
Those coming into Gaza enter the part of the Strip currently controlled by Israeli troops, though contact with civilians is generally done through armed Israel-aligned militias that also operate in that part of the enclave. Most civilians only pass through the Israel-controlled area on their way to the 47 percent of the Strip where most Gazans live.
Lugging luggage and keeping a balance
The Rafah terminal, housed in a warren of shipping containers after Israel destroyed the original buildings in 2024, is only open for six hours a day, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., in order to ensure that the European staff is able to leave Gaza before dark, though in practice they stayed longer during the first few days to facilitate the crossings.
Even with the extended opening, a slew of unforeseen snags have slowed the work, meaning only a few Gazans get through the crossing daily.
Gazans coming back from Egypt are allowed to bring one piece of luggage, but there is no size limit on the suitcases. After years of being away, many returning Gazans bring massive suitcases that don’t fit into the scanning machines.
“The luggage doesn’t go in, so everything is taken out,” explained Apostolova, a Bulgarian diplomat who formerly headed the EU mission to train Palestinian policemen. “It is put into buckets, and it goes through the scanner one by one.”
Some suitcases are too large to be carried by hand through the various checks, so the Palestinian border agents wind up doing double duty as porters. Or they commandeer golf carts meant for moving handicapped civilians through the crossing to transport the suitcases. All of this holds up the process.
Another factor keeping numbers down is an agreement between Israel and Egypt that the number of Palestinians going into and leaving Gaza be equal every day.
They work carefully to maintain that balance, though there have been four more Gazans who have left during the first two weeks.
If 12 injured Gazans are slated to exit to Egypt, they have to wait until an equal number have been processed and let in, explained Apostolova: “You have to wait until 12 people complete the procedure in the reverse traffic.”
Because only 12 Gazans were allowed in, the rest had to camp on the Egyptian side of the border overnight, according to the Associated Press.
The agreement limits what Gazans can bring into the Strip, with electronics, cigarettes, liquids and electronics banned, save for a single cellphone.
Gazans entering the Strip can only bring NIS 2,000 ($647) in cash, and those leaving are only allowed to take NIS 1,000 ($323).
The need to check for restricted goods and confiscate them slows the process.
Apostolova said the technical delays and the confiscation of forbidden items were the main source of the complaints.
The travelers “stayed many hours before they crossed the border, yes,” she conceded, “because at the moment, what we need is a bit more organization, even around the transportation of this luggage.”
“That’s why you have articles about people who are mistreated, and who stayed for hours before they crossed the border,” she insisted.
Some of the complaints are being addressed, Apostolova said. She noted Israel is building portable toilets and shade in the waiting areas.
The IDF’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, which facilitates the movement of Palestinian civilians, told The Times of Israel that crossings were contingent on submission of approved manifests from Egypt and the World Health Organization, as well as “the crossing’s capacity.”
The crossing is open only for the passage of Gazan Palestinian pedestrians. Foreigners, including aid workers, who seek to enter Gaza can only do so via Israel’s crossings with the Strip. Goods and aid continue to go through the Israeli crossings. Israel is also still refusing to allow the unsupervised entry of foreign journalists into Gaza.
‘Absolutely perfect’ coordination
EUBAM is a “third party, a neutral party,” stressed Apostolova.“Our role as a mentor and adviser in this border operation is through our expertise… [on] how to make this process smoother, respectful, respecting the dignity of people, and fast. This is what we want.”
The mission’s mandate comes from the Agreement for Movements and Access signed by Israel and the Palestinian Authority in 2005, and initially consisted of 188 staffers.
In keeping with the EU’s no-contact policy with terrorist groups, the Rafah Crossing mission left Gaza and moved to Ramat Gan when Hamas seized power in Gaza in 2007, downsizing to just a few staffers.
EUBAM returned in January last year, as the crossing opened to outgoing pedestrian traffic into Egypt. Most of those leaving were medical evacuations, with a limit of 150 crossings out of Gaza a day.
That mission lasted 47 days, with around 4,000 crossings, before the ceasefire fell apart, said Apostolova.
EUBAM returned in October, as part of the ceasefire brokered by US President Donald Trump.
Every morning, its staffers head from Ashkelon to the Israel-Gaza border near the south of the Strip, where they meet an IDF convoy that accompanies them into Gaza and on to the crossing.
Coordination with the IDF has been “absolutely perfect” thus far, said Apostolova.
The United Nations World Health Organization is a central player in the complex effort. Most of those leaving Gaza are doing so for medical reasons, and the WHO sets the lists for who gets to leave using its own selection process. “The moment they have the names, they put them in a vetting procedure, which is Israel and Egypt,” explained Apostolova. “When the list is approved, it comes to us.”
The WHO is also the only organization ferrying injured Gazans in ambulances from the Hamas-controlled part of the Strip to the Rafah Crossing, which requires extensive coordination.
The WHO convoys can’t cross the Yellow Line into Israel-controlled territory on their own, so the organization has to coordinate with COGAT’s Coordination and Liaison Administration, or CLA, for Gaza.
The CLA then informs EUBAM that a convoy is moving and when it will reach the crossing point each morning.
EUBAM has lists of who will be crossing 24 hours in advance, with names and passport numbers.
The WHO transfers the patients from their ambulances to “sterile ambulances” that never leave the Rafah crossing compound.
Those crossing into Egypt without passports are given a document with their name and the date that they crossed, and then they have to go to the Palestinian embassy in Cairo within 48 hours to get a passport.
Controversially for Israel, the border agents have been stamping documents with the Palestinian Authority logo, even though Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged that the PA would have no part in the running of Gaza.
Gazans coming from Egypt present their documents to the Palestinian Authority border agents when they reach the crossing, then are IDed by a facial recognition camera operation by the CLA. Once they are positively identified, a door opens and they enter to crossing itself.
Once through, they move to the shipping container to have their documents processed, then head to a customs check where machines scan their belongings.
Once that is done, they move to a waiting area, then head to a parking lot inside the Gaza Strip where buses are supposed to take them through IDF-controlled territory to Khan Younis, on the other side of the Yellow Line.
The buses are operated by the Abu Shabab militia, an armed anti-Hamas group that has worked with Israel inside the Strip, according to Gazans who have spoken to Israeli and international media.
The Gazans are then brought to an IDF checkpoint some five kilometers (1.8 miles) from Rafah, where they undergo an additional security screening. Only afterward are they permitted to continue toward the Hamas-controlled areas of Gaza.
Citing unnamed sources, the Qatari Al-Araby network said those who successfully returned to Gaza were interrogated several times during their journey, including by masked gunmen who stopped them at a checkpoint some 500 meters from the Rafah Crossing.
The sources said that the armed individuals handed the returnees over to IDF troops, whereupon they were interrogated and their belongings were confiscated.
Apostolova declined to comment on those reports. “We want to keep to the limits of our mandate, and we do not want to step in something that is already the responsibility of someone else,” she insisted.
“Our mandate does not allow us to go beyond the perimeter of the compound,” she said.
‘All sides are trying’
The process at the crossing is steadily improving, said Apostolova, and she and her team are holding regular “technical meetings” with Egypt and Israel. Some of the meetings take place in the Civil-Military Coordination Center in Kiryat Gat with American involvement, while others occur in the EUBAM or COGAT offices.
Egypt and Israel “have their own considerations, and they have their own challenges in this process,” she said, hinting at the political sensitivity of the operation.
She said the mission had not been in touch with the new National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, the nascent body set up by US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace to run postwar Gaza, nor had it been in contact with the Board of Peace Executive Committee heading up the transition.
EUBAM does have a permanent representative at the CMCC, however, which oversees many of the aid convoys moving in and out of Gaza.
“Israel will continue working closely with its partners to facilitate the entry and exit of Gazans through the Rafah Crossing, in line with the agreed framework,” COGAT promised.
“All sides are trying, I must say,” Apostolova maintained. “We have very good cooperation with Israel and with the Egyptian side as well. We try to solve it, but it does not happen in a week.”
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