The Gaza Strip is hemmed in by Egypt and Israel, its fate bound to a handful of border crossings.
Today, only three matter: Rafah, where Gaza meets Egypt; Erez, or Beit Hanoun, in the north with Israel; and Karm Abu Salem, the heavily controlled cargo terminal through which nearly all goods must pass.
This was not always the case.
Until a decade and a half ago, Gaza’s map of exits and entries was far more complex: Karni (Al-Muntar), Sufa, Nahal Oz, and Kissufim were once the primary routes for moving goods, fuel, and people. One by one, Israel shuttered them between 2007 and 2011, consolidating its blockade into a tighter vise.
Rafah, in Gaza’s south, was initially designed for people, not supplies. Yet with the outbreak of Israel's genocidal war on the Gaza Strip in October 2023, it also became a conduit for food, fuel, and medicine.
Karm Abu Salem, by contrast, functions as the strip’s narrowest artery: the single portal for commercial cargo, every truck checked, delayed, or denied by Israeli authorities.
Together, these two crossings have come to embody Gaza’s fragile lifeline: Rafah, a symbol of hope and diplomacy, and Karm Abu Salem, a choke point of control.
Rafah: A town and a crossing
Few places encapsulate Gaza’s modern history as starkly as Rafah, a town split by borders and a crossing that has swung between promise and paralysis.
In 2005, the Agreement on Movement and Access between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) briefly reshaped that story. Brokered by Washington and backed by the European Union (EU) after Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, the deal handed Rafah’s operations to the PA under European monitoring.
The agreement was meant to regulate border crossings and internal movement, allowing Palestinians greater freedom of travel between the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank while addressing Israel’s security demands.
For the first time, Gazans managed an international border. However, Tel Aviv still pulled strings from afar, retaining oversight of passenger lists and travel permissions.
Commercial cargo, however, was barred. All goods were forced, instead, through Karm Abu Salem, where Israeli authorities inspected every shipment before it entered Gaza.
The arrangement collapsed in June 2007 when Hamas took over Gaza's governance. EU monitors withdrew; Israel suspended its role; and Hamas assumed de facto control of Rafah’s Palestinian terminal, overseeing crowd management and coordination of passenger lists, but without international recognition.
The crossing became a site of negotiation by circumstance, sometimes open for medical emergencies or study abroad, but often sealed for months on end.
Israel may not have had boots on the ground, but its veto power dictated when Rafah functioned. That shadow authority lasted until May 2024, when Israeli forces reoccupied Rafah’s Palestinian side during a ground offensive, extinguishing even the illusion of autonomy.
For Palestinians, Rafah has long stood as more than a border. It is an opening to the world—an airport without planes, a port without ships.
Diplomacy and destruction
After 7 October, Rafah became both a humanitarian artery and a diplomatic theatre.
Egypt used the crossing to assert its central role in ceasefire talks and postwar planning. Foreign ministers, United Nations (UN) envoys, and Arab and European delegations made Rafah their stage, often photographed alongside Egyptian Red Crescent (ERC) humanitarian aid convoys.
But the gateway itself was repeatedly struck. Israeli air raids targeted the Palestinian side four times since October 2023, halting aid and damaging infrastructure. Each time, Egyptian crews repaired it within days, a sign of its indispensability.
For Cairo, Rafah is not only a logistical channel, but a cornerstone of a political blueprint. By funnelling construction materials, medical equipment, and expertise into Gaza itself, Egypt has sought to rebuild hospitals and schools on Palestinian soil rather than see people displaced into Sinai.
Every convoy through Rafah, then, carries two layers of meaning: relief for Gaza’s population and a political message that reconstruction must stabilize the strip, not empty it. A daily reinforcement of Egypt's categorical rejection of the forced displacement of Palestinians.
Karm Abu Salem: The cargo hinge
Karm Abu Salem is Gaza’s only commercial crossing, and Israel’s choke point on its economy.
Before October 2023, some 500 to 600 trucks entered Gaza daily. Closures significantly reduce that number during periods of tension.
Since the outbreak of Israel's war on Gaza, the flow has slowed to a trickle. Convoys often pile up on the Egyptian side, waiting for permission to proceed. Even when allowed through, inspections can stretch for hours, reducing deliveries to fewer than 100 trucks a day at times, which is six times less than pre-war levels.
Each delay translates directly into shortages. Every extra security step means another day without food in shelters or fuel in the strip's remaining hospitals.
Rafah and Karm Abu Salem have long worked as complements under unequal control: Rafah for people under Egyptian–Palestinian coordination, Karm Abu Salem for goods under Israeli authority.
That division has given Israel decisive leverage over Gaza’s humanitarian lifeline.
Egypt: Gaza's humanitarian artery
Since October 2023, Egypt has launched a massive humanitarian operation.
By September 2025, Cairo had delivered more than 570,000 tonnes of aid, around 70 percent of all assistance reaching Gaza since the outbreak of the genocide. The effort included 209 ambulances, 81,000 tonnes of fuel, four field hospitals inside Gaza, and two referral hospitals in Arish.
Over 35,000 ERC volunteers have coordinated the operation through multiple hubs. Inside Egypt, the organization has reunited 85,000 families, provided cash support to 2,000 households, and delivered nearly 250,000 medical services.
But every convoy, whether carrying flour, medicine, or water-purification units, has faced the same obstacle: Israeli control.
“Israel is the main party blocking and imposing restrictions on the flow of humanitarian aid,” Egypt’s Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty told CNN. “They are not allowing any single truck or person to move in.”
The politics of passage
While Egypt coordinates aid, Israel decides its pace and volume. Ceasefire agreements may briefly open the gates, but renewed offensives close them again.
On 7 May 2024, Israeli forces occupied the Palestinian side of Rafah during a ground operation, its first military presence there since 2005, shutting Gaza’s last international gateway and triggering Egyptian condemnation. Cairo declared it would “never accept any change” to the crossing’s status and demanded a return to the Palestinian border authority.
Israeli forces withdrew from Rafah under a temporary ceasefire in January 2025 but re-entered two months later after Tel Aviv unilaterally broke the truce. The renewed assault shut the crossing entirely and reimposed a land, sea, and air blockade that precipitated famine in Gaza—the first officially declared by the UN in the Middle East.
In late July, amid mounting international outrage, Israel allowed a limited flow of aid through Karm Abu Salem—the crossing it fully controls.
Every truck is screened there, in a process that international aid groups call opaque and unnecessarily restrictive. The consequence is measured in shortages, empty shelves, darkened hospital wards, and water systems that fail for lack of spare parts.
Human cost
Israel's genocidal war on Gaza has destroyed most of Gaza, 80 percent of homes damaged, 80 percent of hospitals affected, and most water systems destroyed.
The Israeli army has killed, so far, over 67,000 Palestinians and wounded 168,000 others, most of them women and children. Over those two years, Israel has also forcibly displaced Gaza's population of two million multiple times.
Rafah and Karm Abu Salem now stand as opposing emblems: one of hope, the other of control. Rafah’s reopening restores dignity and relief; Karm Abu Salem reflects restriction and dependence.
For Egypt, these crossings are not just border points, but the pulse of Gaza’s survival. Each repaired road and reopened gate is a reminder that amid destruction and diplomacy, Gaza’s narrow passage to life still runs through Egypt’s southern gate.
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