GAZA CITY, Palestine: Israel kept the lifeline Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt closed on Wednesday, despite earlier reports that it would reopen to allow aid convoys into the war-ravaged Palestinian territory.
Early in the day, Israeli public broadcaster KAN reported that the crossing point would reopen, but humanitarian sources, cited by AFP, said that the crossing remained closed for aid convoys. Meanwhile, a government spokeswoman, cited by AFP, ignored questions on the subject.
UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher expressed frustration that the ceasefire, brokered by US President Donald Trump and hailed by world leaders, had yet to facilitate the scale of relief needed in the devastated Palestinian territory.
“As Hamas has agreed, they must make strenuous efforts to return all the bodies of deceased hostages, urgently,” Fletcher said.
“As Israel has agreed, they must allow the massive surge of humanitarian aid — thousands of trucks a week — on which so many lives depend, and on which the world has insisted. We need more crossings open.”
Humanitarian risk
Meanwhile, under the Trump plan endorsed by international mediators, Israel and Hamas are expected to continue their exchange of human remains, which also hit an unexpected obstacle on Wednesday.
The swap has seen the last 20 surviving hostages return home in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners freed from Israeli jails, as well as a halt in the Israeli bombardment.
So far, Hamas has handed back eight bodies, seven of which have been identified. The remains of 20 others remain in Gaza.
The eighth — unidentified — body was not that of a former hostage, the Israeli military said after overnight tests.
Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir has threatened to cut off aid supplies to Gaza if Hamas fails to return the remains of soldiers still held in the territory.
Israel, meanwhile, transferred another 45 Palestinian bodies that had been in its custody to Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, bringing the number handed back to 90, the territory’s health ministry said.
Under the Trump plan, Israel is to return 15 Palestinian dead for every deceased Israeli hostage.
Aid trucks
The Israeli bombardment campaign has led to a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, with the densely populated territory reliant on aid that was heavily restricted, when not cut off outright.
At the end of August, the United Nations declared a famine in Gaza, though Israel rejected the claim. The return of aid is listed in Trump’s 20-point plan for Gaza.
Another political challenge is Hamas’s disarmament, a demand the Palestinian group has refused to countenance.
Trump’s plan says that Hamas members who agree to “decommission their weapons” will be given amnesty.
“If they don’t disarm, we will disarm them,” Trump told reporters at the White House a day after visiting the Middle East to celebrate the Gaza ceasefire.
“And it will happen quickly and perhaps violently.”
