Rafah Border Crossing
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| Rafah Crossing | |
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| Rafah Crossing | |
| Official name | Rafah Border Crossing معبر رفح מעבר רפיח |
| Carries | Pedestrians |
| Crosses | Philadelphi Route |
| Locale |  Rafah, Egypt, Egypt Rafah, Gaza Strip |
| Maintained by | Egypt Palestinian Authority European Union (observer) Israel (observer) |
Coordinates: 31°14′54″N 34°15′34″E / 31.24833°N 34.25944°E
See: Egypt – Gaza subterranean barrier
The Rafah Border Crossing (Arabic: معبر رفح, Hebrew: מעבר רפיח) is an international border crossing between Egyptian and Palestinian-controlled Rafah. It was built by the Israeli and Egyptian governments after the 1979 Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty and 1982 Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula, and was managed by the Israel Airports Authority until it was evacuated on 11 September 2005 as part of Israel's unilateral disengagement plan. It has since become the mission of the European Union Border Assistance Mission Rafah (EUBAM) to monitor the crossing.
The Rafah crossing was opened on 25 November 2005 and operated nearly daily until 25 June 2006.[1] Between then and November 2006, it was closed by Israel on 86% of days due to security reasons.[1] It was not opened for the export of goods.[1] In June 2007, it was closed entirely after the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip.
The EU Ambassador to Israel said that EUBAM monitors could not return to man the crossing because the legal basis for EUBAM - the November 2005 agreement on movement and access - specified that the terminal was to be manned by the Fatah-aligned Force 17, who were no longer there.[2]
On January 23, 2008, masked gunmen demolished the wall, that Hamas-linked militants had apparently weakened in 2007,[3] dividing the Egyptian and Palestinian portions of Rafah,[citation needed] and several hundred thousand Gazans entered Egypt, most of them to buy food and supplies.[3] (See 2008 breach of the Gaza–Egypt border.)
On December 27, 2008, Egypt opened the crossing to care for the wounded after the Israeli airstrikes in Gaza (See 2008 Gaza Strip bombings.)
[edit] References
- ^ a b c United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs: The Agreement on Movement and Access One Year On
- ^ Herb Keinon (June 28, 2007). "EU monitors to stay away from Rafah". http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1182951031929&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull.
- ^ a b Barzak, Ibrahim (2008-01-23). "Gazans flood Egypt after border breach". Associated Press. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080123/ap_on_re_mi_ea/israel_palestinians. Retrieved 2008-01-26. "tens of thousands of Gazans flooded into Egypt on Wednesday"
[edit] External links
- US Consular Information Sheet - Israel, the West Bank and Gaza
- The Agreement on Movement and Access One Year On United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
[edit] See also
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