Israel will reopen Gaza’s Rafah crossing with Egypt for the passage of people only after completing an operation to locate the body of the last remaining Israeli hostage in the territory, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said late on Sunday.
The border was supposed to have opened during the initial phase of U.S. President Donald Trump's plan to end the war, under a ceasefire reached in October between Israel and Hamas.
However, Israel conditioned the reopening on the return of all living hostages held by Palestinian militant factions in Gaza, as well as a "100% effort" by Hamas to locate and return the bodies of all deceased hostages.
All have been returned except for the body of police officer Ran Gvili. The Israeli military said on Sunday it had launched a "targeted operation" in northern Gaza to retrieve his remains, while an Israeli military official said there were "several intelligence leads" regarding his possible location.
The Israeli military "is currently conducting a focused operation to exhaust all of the intelligence that has been gathered in the effort to locate and return the fallen hostage, Master Sgt. Ran Gvili, of blessed memory," Netanyahu's office said in a statement.
It added that when the operation is complete, "Israel will open the Rafah Crossing."
On Thursday, Ali Shaath, head of a transitional Palestinian committee backed by the U.S. to temporarily administer Gaza, said the Rafah Crossing would open this week. It is effectively the sole route in or out of Gaza for nearly all of the more than 2 million people who live there.
The Gaza side of the crossing has been under Israeli military control since 2024.
"As part of President Trump's 20-point plan, Israel has agreed to a limited reopening of the Rafah Crossing for pedestrian passage only, subject to a full Israeli inspection mechanism," Netanyahu's office said.
This month, Washington announced the plan had moved into the second phase, under which Israel is expected to withdraw troops further from Gaza and Hamas is due to yield control of the territory's administration.
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have welcomed Jordan's proposal to convene a meeting of Arab and Islamic countries to address the worsening situation in Pal...
At least 18 coal miners have been killed and 14 others remain trapped after a powerful methane gas explosion caused part of a mining complex to collap...
U.S. President Donald Trump has announced what he described as a "historic" agreement to end the war in Gaza, saying his Board of Peace had secured a ...
French DJ and electropop musician Kavinsky, whose atmospheric sound shaped a generation of electronic music fans, has died at the age of 50, French authorities said on Tuesday.
Saudi Arabia said its overnight strikes on Iran-backed group targets in Iraq were carried out in self-defence and warned it would take further military action if the groups launched new attacks against the kingdom.
The U.S. military said it completed its latest wave of strikes on Iran, a two-hour operation that hit dozens of targets. Washington described the strikes as a "powerful response" to Iranian missile attacks targeting U.S. forces in the Middle East a day earlier.
A fire involving two gas vessels at Egypt's Damietta port has prompted conflicting reports over whether the incident was caused by a drone strike or an onboard technical fault. Egyptian authorities said there were no casualties.
The death toll from the powerful earthquake that struck Japan’s southwestern Kumamoto prefecture has risen to 30, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said on Thursday, as water and power shortages left survivors exposed to extreme summer heat.
Georgian Post is no longer focused solely on delivering letters and parcels across Georgia. The state postal operator is transforming into a regional logistics hub following a new agreement with Cainiao, the logistics arm of Alibaba.
Saudi Arabia has extended a $5 billion financial facility for Pakistan until December 2028, easing the country's external financing pressure as Islamabad continues economic reforms under an International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme.
President Ilham Aliyev arrived in the Kyrgyz Republic on Wednesday for a state visit focused on expanding economic cooperation, transport connectivity and political coordination between the two Turkic nations.
Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan have elevated their bilateral relationship to the level of an alliance after Presidents Shavkat Mirziyoyev and Sadyr Japarov signed a Treaty on Allied Relations during high-level talks in the Kyrgyz resort city of Cholpon-Ata.
Kazakhstan’s main oil export corridor has been disrupted again after drone strikes near Russia’s Black Sea coast forced a temporary suspension of crude loadings, raising fresh concerns over the vulnerability of regional energy infrastructure to the war in Ukraine.
You can download the AnewZ application from Play Store and the App Store.
What is your opinion on this topic?
Leave the first comment