London Two Filipino doctors from a group of volunteers from Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and up to five American citizens, two from MSF and three from other humanitarian organizations, were this Wednesday some of the first people to be able to leave the Gaza besieged and bombed relentlessly by the Israeli army since October 7. Subsequently, a trickle of ambulances – up to forty – and people with foreign passports, or in some cases with dual nationality, have been able to cross the border crossing with Egypt, currently the only way out of the Strip since it began the war Among them was also the first Spaniard to leave the Strip, the 40-year-old Valencian paramedic Raúl Incertis, also an anesthetist for Doctors Without Borders.
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The first evacuations, the result of an agreement involving Israel, Egypt and Hamas, and in which the mediation of the United States and Qatar have been fundamental, have occurred at the same time as international concern and pressure against of the humanitarian cost of Israel’s military strike against Hamas targets. Jordan, Colombia and Chile have withdrawn their ambassadors from Tel Aviv in protest at the number of civilian deaths there. Bolivia, in turn, has broken diplomatic relations with it.
For their part, the head of the European Union’s foreign policy, Josep Borrell, and the Spanish, Portuguese and Irish foreign ministers have also demanded restraint and respect for humanitarian law from Benjamin Netanyahu. And, already in another tone, which implies a possible expansion of the conflict, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Iran, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, has warned from Ankara, where he met with his Turkish counterpart, Hakan Fidan, that “if there is no immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, and the attacks by the United States and the Zionist regime continue, the consequences will be harsh.” This Tuesday, however, this possibility was ruled out by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, who assured that “the Bible says that there is a time for peace and another time for war, and that this is a time for the war”.
At the last hour of Wednesday, and according to official information collected by the France Presse agency, which cited Egyptian sources, 90 wounded Palestinians and 545 other people – foreigners or with dual nationality – had been able to leave Gaza. Other sources, however, such as Al-Qahera News, an Egyptian state channel, reduced the number, leaving it at 361 foreigners and 45 injured or sick.
In any case, on Thursday morning the passage will open again, but the number of people who will be able to cross it will be little more than anecdotal and insignificant if compared to the 2.3 million people who live in impossible conditions in what has described it as the world’s largest open-air prison, and which Save the Children has confirmed this week has also become the world’s largest children’s cemetery: more than 3,200 have died in three weeks of conflict, a number that far exceeds the number of children who have lost their lives in war zones since 2019.
US President Joe Biden has hailed the opening of Rafah as a diplomatic success and has even taken credit for “ensuring safe passage” for wounded Palestinians and foreigners to leave Gaza. In a tweet, he said: “Today, thanks to American leadership, we secured safe passage for wounded Palestinians and for foreign nationals to leave Gaza. We hope American citizens leave today and hope to see more in the coming days. We will not stop working to get the Americans out of Gaza.” Sources familiar with the behind-the-scenes negotiations have assured al Financial Times what up to a thousand people can be evacuated daily from now on. Some 6,000 foreigners or dual nationals had been trapped in the Strip when the war broke out.
Why has it opened now?
After the first scenes of ambulances going to a field hospital that has been set up ten kilometers from Rafah, and of the first foreigners crossing the crossing on foot, the immediate question that needs to be asked is why that the Egyptian president has allowed the opening of the border. There are at least two interpretations.
British diplomatic sources pointed out this last Wednesday that Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi has come to the conviction that it was possible to do so without losing control and without repeating scenes like those at the Kabul airport at the time of the Taliban’s return. Al-Sisi’s great fear, insist these British sources, was that “the border would be breached and he would suddenly find himself with a massive refugee problem on his hands.” From this point of view, he would have agreed with the international community, and specifically with the Israelis, and with Hamas via Qatar, an agreed list of foreign citizens, which will be expanded in the coming days.
The other explanation, perhaps more difficult to accept, comes from the Israeli media. According to this theory, Israel pressures Egypt to take in refugees in exchange for debt forgiveness with the World Bank. Netanyahu would have held talks with world leaders to this effect. But the idea completely clashes with the electoral calendar of the Egyptian presidential elections, which will be held next month. The last thing Al-Sisi would want is for the Sinai to be the new home of the Palestinians, forced into a new Nakba, the exile they suffered at the time of the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 .Beyond any glimmer of hope for the Palestinians, the very restricted opening of the Rafah crossing has only highlighted the extent of the enormous humanitarian tragedy they face.
2023-11-01 20:14:26
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