Main Gaza gateway reopens Monday for entry into enclave
\n Rafah
\nThe Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt will remain closed until further notice, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday, adding its reopening will depend on Hamas handing over the bodies of deceased hostages as the two sides continued to trade blame over ceasefire violations.
\nNetanyahu\u2019s statement came shortly after the Palestinian embassy in Egypt announced that the Rafah crossing, the main gateway for Gazans to leave and enter the enclave, would reopen on Monday for entry into Gaza.
\nNetanyahu\u2019s government and Hamas have been trading blame over violations of the US-mediated ceasefire for days. Late Saturday in Washington, the State Department said it had received \u201ccredible reports indicating an imminent ceasefire violation by Hamas against the people of Gaza.\u201d
\nThe State Department said the planned attack against Palestinian civilians would be a \u201cdirect and grave violation of the ceasefire agreement.\u201d
\n\u201cShould Hamas proceed with this attack, measures will be taken to protect the people of Gaza and preserve the integrity of the ceasefire,\u201d the department said in a statement, without providing further details.
\nTrump had said he would consider allowing Israeli forces to resume fighting in Gaza if Hamas fails to uphold its end of the ceasefire deal that he brokered.
\nHamas did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
\nThe militant group has launched a security crackdown in urban areas vacated by Israeli forces, demonstrating its power through public executions and clashes with local armed clans.
\nDispute over aid, return of bodies
\nHamas, in a statement late on Saturday, said Netanyahu\u2019s decision \u201cconstitutes a blatant violation of the ceasefire agreement and a repudiation of the commitments he made to the mediators and guarantor parties.\u201d
\nIt also said the continued closure of the Rafah crossing would prevent the entry of equipment needed to search for and locate more hostage bodies under the rubble, and would thus delay the recovery and handover of the remains.
\nIsrael said it received two more bodies late on Saturday, meaning 12 out of 28 bodies have been handed over under a US-brokered ceasefire and hostage deal agreed between Israel and Hamas last week.
\nThe war has caused a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, with nearly all inhabitants driven from their homes, a global hunger monitor confirming famine and health authorities overwhelmed.
\nThe dispute over the return of bodies and shipments of life-saving humanitarian aid, underlines the fragility of the ceasefire and still has the potential to upset the deal, along with other major issues that are included in US President Donald Trump\u2019s 20-point plan to end the war.
\nAs part of the deal, Hamas released all 20 living Israeli hostages it had been holding for two years, in return for almost 2,000 Palestinian detainees and convicted prisoners jailed in Israel.
\nFormidable obstacles to peace
\nBut Israel says that Hamas has been too slow to hand over the bodies of deceased hostages it still holds. The militant group says that locating some of the bodies amid the vast destruction in Gaza will take time.
\nThe deal requires Israel to return 360 bodies of Palestinian militants for the deceased Israeli hostages and so far, it has handed over 15 bodies in return for each Israeli body it has received.
\nRafah has largely been shut since May 2024. The ceasefire deal also includes the ramping up of aid into the enclave, where hundreds of thousands of people were determined in August to be affected by famine, according to the IPC global hunger monitor.
\nAfter cutting off all supplies for 11 weeks in March, Israel increased aid to Gaza in July, scaling it up further since the ceasefire.
\nAround 560 metric tons of food had entered Gaza per day on average since the US-brokered truce, but this was still well below the scale of need, according to the U.N. World Food Programme.
\nFormidable obstacles to Trump\u2019s plan to end the war remain. Key questions of Hamas disarmament and how Gaza will be governed, the make-up of an international \u201cstabilization force,\u201d and moves towards the creation of a Palestinian state have yet to be resolved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Main Gaza gateway reopens Monday for entry into enclave Rafah The Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt will remain closed until further notice, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday, adding its reopening will depend on Hamas handing over the bodies of deceased hostages as the two sides continued to trade blame over […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":509626,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-509605","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n