Palestinians were allowed into Gaza from Egypt late Monday after the long-awaited reopening of the Rafah border crossing, but the limited number of travelers underscored how narrow the window remained for people trying to move between the territory and Egypt, the Associated Press reported. The reopening came after a small group of medical evacuees was ferried from Gaza into Egypt, and returnees arrived hours later, according to AP.
Ambulances queued for hours at the border before patients were taken into Egypt, and state-run Al-Qahera News broadcast images of the waiting lines. Just before midnight, a bus arrived in Gaza carrying Palestinian returnees who had fled the fighting early in the war, AP said, as the vehicle entered the compound of a hospital in Khan Younis.
AP said the reopening marked a key step in the Israel-Hamas ceasefire but was mostly symbolic because few people were allowed to cross and no goods were permitted. Gaza residents and officials said the limitations were apparent Monday, with crossings falling well short of the 50 people officials had said would be allowed to move in each direction.
The AP report described the scale of need within Gaza and beyond. Gaza health officials said about 20,000 Palestinian children and adults needing medical care hope to leave the devastated territory via Rafah. The report also cited thousands of other Palestinians outside Gaza’s territory who hope to enter and return home.
In Gaza, Rajaa Abu Mustafa said the health ministry called her family and told them they would travel to Egypt for her 17-year-old son Mohamed’s treatment. “The health ministry called and told us that we will travel to Egypt for (his) treatment,” she said in the AP report, adding that he was blinded by a shot to the eye last year when he joined Palestinians seeking food from aid trucks outside Khan Younis.
Egypt said it was preparing to receive evacuated patients, with authorities telling AP that about 150 hospitals across the country were ready to receive those evacuated through Rafah. The report noted that the crossing is separated from Cairo by a six-hour drive, and it said the Egyptian Red Crescent readied “safe spaces” on the Egyptian side of the border. The World Health Organization figures in the report said more than 10,000 patients have been evacuated from Gaza since the war began, though AP said Israel’s seizure of Rafah in May 2024 slowed evacuations for long periods to an average of 17 patients a week.
AP also reported that Israel has banned sending patients to hospitals in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem since the war began, cutting off what had been a main outlet for some Palestinians needing treatment unavailable in Gaza. U.N. officials, the AP report said, called on other countries on Monday to take in more patients from Gaza so that “everyone receives the treatment they need.”
As the crossing reopened, AP described family reunions as a parallel objective for those trying to return. Iman Rashwan said she was anticipating the arrival of her mother and sister, who left Gaza a year ago when her mother’s heart condition worsened and she was referred for treatment in Egypt. “This time it’s real,” Rashwan said, describing a waiting period she said had lasted too long.
Separately from the crossing’s reopening, violence continued across Gaza on Monday, AP reported. Gaza hospital officials said an Israeli navy ship fired on a tent camp, killing a 3-year-old Palestinian boy; Israel’s military said it was looking into the incident. The AP report said the Israeli military also said it killed four Palestinians in northern Gaza who approached troops near the line marking Israeli-controlled territory, describing them as posing an “imminent threat.”
The AP report cited the Gaza health ministry’s casualty accounting, saying more than 520 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire since the ceasefire went into effect Oct. 10, and that they were among the over 71,800 Palestinians killed since the start of the war, based on the ministry’s records. The report said the ministry, part of Gaza’s Hamas-led government, keeps detailed casualty records that U.N. agencies and independent experts generally consider reliable.
AP said the Rafah crossing will be supervised by European Union border patrol agents with a small Palestinian presence, and that historically Israel and Egypt have vetted Palestinians applying to cross. The report said Egypt has repeatedly said Rafah must remain open so that Palestinians can both enter and exit Gaza, while Israel’s approach to the crossing has been linked to efforts against arms-smuggling by Hamas.
The report added that Rafah had been closed since Israeli troops seized it in May 2024, and that it had been briefly opened for evacuation of medical patients during a ceasefire in early 2025. AP said the reopening was seen as a key step as the U.S.-brokered ceasefire agreement moves into its second phase, which is described in the report as involving steps such as establishing a Palestinian committee to govern Gaza, deploying an international security force, disarming Hamas, and beginning rebuilding.
The Rafah crossing’s limited restart leaves many waiting, the AP report indicated—while at least some medical patients reached Egypt and some returnees reached Gaza late Monday, the scale of travel and the ongoing violence on the ground meant the reopening did not quickly translate into broad relief for Gaza’s wider population.