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03-03-2026
JERUSALEM/ CAIRO: Israel has closed Gaza’s Rafah border crossing with Egypt amid the joint Israeli-United States attacks on Iran.
“Several necessary security adjustments have been implemented, including the closure of the crossings into the Gaza Strip, among them the Rafah Crossing, until further notice,” Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) said in a statement.
The Rafah crossing, located on Gaza’s southern border, had reopened only last month, allowing a limited number of Palestinians to leave for the first time in months, including patients in urgent need of medical care.
The crossing is considered vital for the delivery of humanitarian aid and the evacuation of critically ill patients.
Virtually all of Gaza’s population of more than two million people was displaced during Israel’s genocidal war on the territory, and the enclave remains heavily dependent on humanitarian assistance.
In mid-February, the United Nations said it continued to face impediments in delivering lifesaving aid to Gaza.
In a February report, Human Rights Watch said Israeli restrictions had contributed to shortages of medicines, reconstruction materials, food and water inside the Strip.
COGAT claimed that sufficient food had entered Gaza since the start of the ceasefire to meet four times the nutritional needs of the population. However, it did not provide any evidence to back its claim.
“The substantial quantities of food that have entered since the beginning of the ceasefire amount to four times the nutritional needs of the population,” the Israeli defence body said. “Therefore, the existing stock is expected to suffice for an extended period.”
It added that “the closure of the crossings will have no impact on the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip”, saying it would remain in contact with the international community and provide updates on any developments.
COGAT is the Israeli military body responsible for overseeing civil affairs in the occupied Palestinian territory. Critics say it functions as an instrument of surveillance and control, particularly in enforcing movement restrictions and closures.
Trump’s Iran strikes benefit Israel, not US: Analysts
President Donald Trump stood in front of regional leaders during a visit to the Middle East in May and declared a new era of US foreign policy in the region, one that is not guided by trying to reshape it or change its governing systems.
“In the end, the so-called nation-builders wrecked far more nations than they built, and the interventionists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves,” the US president said in rebuke of his hawkish predecessors. Less than a year later, Trump ordered an all-out assault on Iran with the stated goal of bringing “freedom” to the country, borrowing language from the playbook of interventionist neoconservatives, like former President George W Bush, whom he spent his political career criticizing.
Analysts say the war with Iran does not fit with Trump’s stated political ideology, policy goals or campaign promises.
Instead, several Iran experts told media that Trump is waging a war, together with Israel, that only benefits Israel and its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
“This is, once again, a war of choice launched by the US with [a] push from Israel,” said Negar Mortazavi, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy in Washington, DC.
“This is another Israeli war that the US is launching. Israel has pushed the US to attack Iran for two decades, and they finally got it.” (Int’l News Desk)
