Palestinians in Gaza watched with hope and impatience Sunday as workers laid the groundwork to reopen the territory’s Rafah border crossing with Egypt, its lifeline to the world. Israel says the crossing is scheduled to resume Monday (February 2, 2026) as its ceasefire with Hamas moves ahead.

“Opening the crossing is a good step, but they set a limit on the number of people allowed to cross, and this is a problem,” said Ghalia Abu Mustafa, a woman from Khan Younis.

Israel said the crossing had opened in a test, and the Israeli military agency that controls aid to Gaza said residents could begin crossing Monday. But only a small number of people can cross at first.

“We want a large number of people to leave, for it to be open so that sick people can go and return,” said Suhaila Al-Astal, a woman displaced from the city of Rafah who said her sick daughter needed help abroad. ”We want the crossing to be open permanently.” Israel’s announcement came a day after Israeli strikes killed at least 30 Palestinians including several children, according to hospital officials — one of the highest death tolls since the ceasefire began on Oct. 10. Israel had accused Hamas of new truce violations.

Nicolay Mladenov, director-general of U.S. President Donald Trump’s new board of peace in Gaza, urged the parties to “exercise restraint” and said his office was working with the new Palestinian committee chosen to oversee Gaza to find ways that prevent future incidents.

Dozens will enter and leave Gaza daily at first

The Rafah crossing has been largely shut since Israel seized it in May 2024. About 20,000 Palestinian children and adults needing medical care are hoping to leave war-devastated Gaza via the crossing, and thousands of other Palestinians outside the territory hope to return home.

Few people, and no cargo, will be allowed to cross at first. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel will allow 50 patients needing medical evacuation to leave daily. An official involved in the discussions, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss diplomatic talks, said each patient can travel with two relatives, while 50 people who left Gaza during the war can return each day.

Zaher al-Wahidi, head of the Gaza Health Ministry’s documentation department, told The Associated Press the ministry hadn’t been notified about the start of medical evacuations.

Israel has said it and Egypt will vet people for exit and entry through the crossing, which will be supervised by European Union border patrol agents. The number of travelers is expected to increase over time if the system is successful.

Israel will stop Doctors Without Borders’ work in Gaza

Also Sunday, Israel’s Diaspora Ministry said it was “moving to terminate” the operations of Doctors Without Borders in Gaza by Feb. 28.

Israel in December suspended the group’s operations there because it refused to comply with new registration requirements for organizations to submit lists of local employees. The medical charity said the regulations could endanger Palestinian staff.

Doctors Without Borders had no immediate comment. It has said Israel’s decision will have a catastrophic impact on its work in Gaza, where it provides funding and international staff for six hospitals and runs two field hospitals and eight primary health centers, clinics and medical points. It also runs two of Gaza’s five stabilization centers helping children with severe malnutrition.

Israel has suspended over two dozen humanitarian organizations from operating in Gaza because of failure or refusal to comply with the new requirements.

The Diaspora Ministry, which proposed them, says they are aimed at preventing Hamas and other militant groups from infiltrating aid groups. The organizations call the rules arbitrary and warn that the bans harm a civilian population desperately in need of aid.

Gaza’s health sector has been devastated by two years of Israeli bombardment and restrictions on supplies.

Rafah has been Gaza’s main crossing

Palestinian security officers on Sunday passed through the Rafah crossing’s Egyptian gate and headed toward the Palestinian gate to join an EU mission that will supervise exit and entry, said an Egyptian official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the media. Ambulances also crossed through the Egyptian gate, the official said.

Before the war, Rafah was the main crossing for people moving in and out of Gaza. The territory has four other border crossings with Israel.

Israel called its 2024 seizure of the Rafah crossing part of efforts to combat Hamas arms smuggling. The crossing briefly opened for the evacuation of medical patients during a ceasefire in early 2025. Israel had resisted reopening the Rafah crossing again, but the recovery of the remains of the last hostage in Gaza last week cleared the way to move forward.

Under the ceasefire terms, Israel’s military controls the area between the Rafah crossing and the zone where most Palestinians live.

Fearing that Israel could use the crossing to push Palestinians out of the enclave, Egypt has repeatedly said it must be open for crossing in both directions. Historically, Israel and Egypt have vetted Palestinians applying to cross.

The ceasefire halted more than two years of war between Israel and Hamas that began with a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 hostages.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed 71,795 Palestinians, including 523 since this ceasefire started, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The ministry doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants in its figures. It maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts.

The ceasefire’s first phase called for the exchange of all hostages held in Gaza for hundreds of Palestinians held by Israel, a surge in humanitarian aid and a partial pullback of Israeli troops.

The second phase is more complicated. It calls for installing a new Palestinian committee to govern Gaza, deploying an international security force, disarming Hamas, and taking steps to begin rebuilding.

Published – February 02, 2026 09:27 am IST

Ambulances line up to enter the Egyptian gate of the Rafah crossing on the way to the Gaza Strip, in Rafah, Egypt, Sunday, Feb. 1, 2026.
| Photo Credit: AP

The United States believes the remaining differences between Israel and Hamas can be bridged in negotiations over the Palestinian militant group’s latest ceasefire proposal, as talks resume in Cairo on Wednesday.

Israeli forces on Tuesday seized the main border crossing between Gaza and Egypt in Rafah, the southern Gaza city where more than one million displaced Palestinians have sought shelter during Israel’s seven-month-old offensive. This cut off a vital route for aid into the tiny enclave, where hundreds of thousands of people are homeless and hungry.

In Cairo, all five delegations participating in ceasefire talks on Tuesday — Hamas, Israel, the U.S., Egypt and Qatar — reacted positively to the resumption of negotiations, and meetings were expected to continue on Wednesday morning, two Egyptian sources said.

CIA Director Bill Burns was to travel from Cairo to Israel later on Wednesday to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli officials, a source familiar with his travel said.

Israel on Monday declared that a three-phase proposal approved by Hamas was unacceptable because terms had been softened.

White House spokesperson John Kirby said Hamas presented a revised proposal, and the new text suggests the remaining gaps can “absolutely be closed.” Speaking on Tuesday, he declined to specify what those were.

Since the only pause in the conflict so far, a week-long ceasefire in November, the two sides have been blocked by Hamas’ refusal to free more Israeli hostages without a promise of a permanent end to the conflict and Israel’s insistence that it would discuss only a temporary halt.

Israeli army footage on Tuesday showed tanks rolling through the Rafah crossing complex between Gaza and Egypt, and the Israeli flag raised on the Gaza side. Israel says Rafah is Hamas fighters’ last stronghold.

Hamas official Osama Hamdan, speaking to reporters in Beirut on Tuesday, warned that if Israel’s military aggression continued in Rafah, there would be no truce agreement.

Israel’s military said it was conducting a limited operation in Rafah to kill fighters and dismantle infrastructure used by Hamas, which runs Gaza. It told civilians, many of whom were previously displaced from other parts of Gaza earlier in the conflict, to go to an “expanded humanitarian zone” some 20 km (12 miles) away.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appealed to Israel and Hamas to spare no effort to agree to a truce. “Make no mistake – a full-scale assault on Rafah would be a human catastrophe,” Guterres said.

In Geneva, U.N. humanitarian office spokesperson Jens Laerke said “panic and despair” were gripping the people in Rafah.

Heavy shelling in Rafah

Residents reported heavy tank shelling on Tuesday evening in some areas of eastern Rafah. A Rafah municipal building caught fire after Israeli shelling, and one Palestinian was killed and several wounded, medics said. An Israeli strike also killed two Palestinians on a motorcycle, they said.

Health officials said Abu Yousef Al-Najar, the main hospital in Rafah, closed on Tuesday after heavy bombardment nearby led medical staff and around 200 patients to flee.

“They have gone crazy. Tanks are firing shells and smoke bombs cover the skies,” said Emad Joudat, 55, a Gaza City resident displaced in Rafah.

The U.N. and other international aid agencies said the closing of the two crossings into southern Gaza — Rafah and Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom — virtually cut the enclave off from outside aid and very few stores were available inside.

Families have been crammed into tented camps and makeshift shelters, suffering from shortages of food, water, medicine and other essentials.

Red Crescent sources in Egypt said shipments had completely halted. “These crossings are a lifeline… They need to be reopened without any delay,” Philippe Lazzarini, head of U.N. aid agency UNRWA, said on X.

The White House said it had been told the Kerem Shalom crossing would re-open on Wednesday and fuel deliveries through Rafah would resume then too. According to Hamas officials, a draft proposal and an official briefed on the talks, the proposal that Hamas approved on Monday included a first phase with a six-week ceasefire, an influx of aid to Gaza, the return of 33 Israeli hostages, alive or dead, and release by Israel of 30 detained Palestinian children and women for each released Israeli hostage.

Critics of the Gaza war have urged U.S. President Joe Biden to pressure Israel to change course. The U.S., Israeli’s closest ally and main weapons supplier, has delayed some arms shipments to Israel for two weeks, according to four sources on Tuesday.

The White House and Pentagon declined comment, but this would be the first such delay since the Biden administration offered its full support to Israel after Hamas’ October 7 attack.

Israel’s offensive has killed 34,789 Palestinians, most of them civilians, in the conflict, the Gaza Health Ministry said.

The war began when Hamas militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 people and abducting about 250 others, of whom 133 are believed to remain in captivity in Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.

Jerusalem:

Israel’s military said a barrage of rockets fired earlier Sunday from the besieged Gaza Strip towards the Kerem Shalom border crossing had killed three soldiers and wounded a dozen others.

Three of the 12 wounded were in serious condition, the military told AFP.

The armed wing of the Palestinian group Hamas earlier claimed the rocket attack, which led Israeli authorities to close the crossing, used to deliver aid into Gaza.

The military said 14 rockets were fired at the crossing from an area adjacent to the Rafah crossing.

In response, the air force carried out a rapid response and destroyed the launchers from which the projectiles were fired, military spokesman Peter Lerner told journalists in an online briefing.

“It’s a very serious event from our perspective, it’s unacceptable, and the IDF (army) is investigating why the soldiers were killed as the siren was sounding,” he said.

The army was “not aware of any interception that took place” during the incoming fire, he said.

“The airforce will look into exactly what happened,” Lerner added.

The soldiers were hit while guarding heavy machinery, tanks and bulldozers that are stationed in the area.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)