Egypt ‘indefinitely’ shuts down Rafah border crossing with Gaza after Israeli attacks

The Egyptian authorities shut down the Rafah border crossing in North Sinai with Gaza until further notice on Monday, 10 October, after ongoing Israeli air strikes hit the Palestinian side of the crossing. With the crossing now closed, the coastal enclave is in a total blockade of the Palestinian strip.

An initial closure of the crossing was imposed almost three days after the Hamas faction, which rules Gaza, had launched an ongoing wide-scale offensive against Israel, killing hundreds and capturing dozens of others, including army personnel.  

"The crossing will be closed indefinitely, for the situation has become quite dangerous after the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip has had an impact on the Egyptian side of the crossing," a high-level official security source told The New Arab on condition of anonymity.

Unconfirmed reports said that Israel attacked the Egyptian part of the crossing earlier as Israeli news outlets reported that the Zionist state had previously warned it would attack any Egyptian trucks carrying fuel or other supplies to the Palestinians in Gaza.

No further details were immediately available at the time of publication.

Over the past hours, videos have gone viral depicting the bombing by Israel of the Rafah crossing in the southern part of Gaza.

The status of the crossing, Gaza's only connection to the outside world, has remained uncertain since Saturday, following Hamas's unprecedented military operation on Israel, as Egypt kept it open at some point for Gazans seeking refuge.

But, it has also been closed over fear for the lives of Egyptian and Palestinian border guards.

Meanwhile, another Egyptian security source, who asked to remain anonymous, told TNA that "a state of high alert had been declared on the borders with Gaza and Israel to ensure no attempts of infiltration by Palestinians into Egypt can take place."

A humanitarian crisis is expected to erupt at any given time, which will likely have a toll on Egypt, a country already undergoing economic turmoil and may be incapable of hosting more refugees.

Since 2007, Egypt and Israel have imposed a strict blockade on Gaza after Hamas assumed power following clashes with the rival Fatah faction that rules the occupied West Bank.

It was not until nearly a decade later, when Hamas dropped its affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood, a legally outlawed group in Egypt since 2014, that the Egyptian regime softened its tone towards the Palestinian faction.

Egypt and Israel have technically been at peace since 1978, sharing strong diplomatic and economic relations.

But the Egyptian people have been at loggerheads with successive Egyptian regimes over normalisation, as many consider Israel a coloniser of Palestine since the 1948 war, an oppressor of the Palestinian people, and a former occupier of the Sinai Peninsula.