Egypt to reopen Rafah crossing after 85 days

Egyptian authorities have said that they would open the Rafah crossing at the border with the besieged Gaza Strip for two days this week, a Gaza government spokesperson said on Monday.

The spokesman for the Ministry of Interior in the Gaza Strip, Iyad al-Bizm, said Egyptian authorities had informed the Hamas-led government that the crossing would be opened for on Wednesday and Thursday in both directions, after 85 days of closure.

The ministry said 30,000 people considered humanitarian cases have requested to travel through the crossing, including medical patients, students, and people residing outside of Gaza.

Egyptian authorities had last opened the crossing for three days in February.

Egypt has upheld an Israeli military blockade on the Gaza Strip for the majority of the past three years, since the ouster of President Muhammad Morsi in 2013 and the rise to power of Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi in Egypt.

The nearly nine-year Israeli blockade has plunged the Gaza Strip’s more than 1.8 million Palestinians into poverty.

The destruction from three Israeli offensives over the past six years and slow reconstruction due to the blockade led the UN in September to warn that Gaza could be “uninhabitable” by 2020.