Talks ongoing with Israel to allow fuel into Gaza

Egypt said planning to let wounded Gazans cross border for treatment

Patients to be admitted to Egyptian medical centers, field hospital said under construction near border; medical ships sailing to Strip’s south coast; US: Hamas not stealing aid

Jacob Magid is The Times of Israel's US bureau chief

Egypt's Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouli (C) holds a press conference during his visit to the Rafah crossing border on October 31, 2023. (Khaled Desouki/AFP)
Egypt's Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouli (C) holds a press conference during his visit to the Rafah crossing border on October 31, 2023. (Khaled Desouki/AFP)

Egypt will be opening the Rafah crossing to allow wounded Palestinians to be treated in Egyptian hospitals in the Sinai Peninsula for the first time since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war, media reports said Tuesday.

National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said earlier in the day that Israel hopes Cairo will open its border in order to allow the injured to be treated in the Rafah hospital along with field hospitals that can be established on Egypt’s side of the border.

Hanegbi also said that a number of countries have heeded Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s request to send ships that will dock off the coast of Gaza and serve as hospitals in the small southwest area of the Strip that Israel has designated as a safe zone.

“Medical teams will be present tomorrow at the crossing to examine the cases coming [from Gaza] as soon as they arrive… and determine the hospitals they will be sent to,” a medical official in Egypt’s city of El Arish told AFP.

Several outlets reported Egypt is also building a field hospital along the border.

Hanegbi urged Gazans to avoid hospitals in the north of the enclave. The Israel Defense Forces has said that Hamas’s main base of operations is under Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.

Palestinians wait to cross into Egypt at the Rafah border crossing in the Gaza Strip on October 16, 2023. (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair)

Egypt has thus far refrained from allowing Gazan civilians to exit through its border, restricting passage to humanitarian aid entering Gaza through the Rafah crossing.

Israeli proposals for Egypt to take in refugees from Gaza have infuriated Cairo, particularly because Jerusalem has refused to publicly promise that those who leave the Strip will be allowed to return, an Egyptian official told The Times of Israel last week.

Amid Israeli concerns that aid entering through the crossing may be diverted by Hamas for its own needs, White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said the US has “no indication” that any of the deliveries were co-opted by the terror group since they began passing through 10 days ago.

Kirby said 66 trucks of aid had entered in the previous 24 hours and that dozens of more trucks were expected to follow later Tuesday and early Wednesday.

No fuel has entered the Strip since the start of the war, as the US recognizes Israel’s concerns that Hamas will try and use the fuel for its own terror activities — to run the ventilation and electricity in its tunnel network.

File: An image shared by the IDF showing twelve oil tanks in which Hamas allegedly stores its reserves while the Gaza Strip is running out of fuel during the ongoing war with Israel, October 24, 2023. (IDF Arabic spokesman on X)

However, the US is in talks with Israel to reach an agreement to allow for the secure entry of fuel, given that current supply in Gaza is “low to near empty,” Kirby said.

The United Nations has warned that hospitals and other vital services in the Palestinian enclave risk shutting down without fuel deliveries. Israel claims Hamas has large stockpiles of fuel that it could transfer for civilian use if it wanted.

Kirby reiterated that the US does not support a ceasefire at this moment but is open to humanitarian pauses in the fighting — something that Israel has not expressly supported yet.

War erupted after the Palestinian terror group’s October 7 massacre, when some 2,500 terrorists burst through the border under cover of a deluge of rockets, and rampaged through more than 20 communities near the Gaza Strip. They killed some 1,400 people, the vast majority of them civilians, massacring them in their homes and at an outdoor music festival. They also abducted at least 245 people to the Strip as hostages, four of whom have since been released by Hamas and one of whom was rescued by the IDF.

The Hamas-run health ministry in the Gaza Strip has claimed that over 8,500 people have died as a result of Israeli airstrikes since October 7. However, the figures issued by the group cannot be independently verified, and are believed to include both civilians and Hamas members killed in Gaza and Israel, including as a consequence of terror groups’ own rocket misfires.

Israel has repeatedly asked that Gaza’s civilians head to the southern Gaza Strip.

Though IDF operations are focused on northern Gaza, especially Gaza City, they will eventually move operations to the rest of the coastal strip, Hanegbi pledged.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.

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