Israel Says It Will Reopen Gaza-Egypt Border Crossing in Days

Israel Says It Will Reopen Gaza-Egypt Border, a Palestinian Lifeline, in DaysThe Rafah crossing will open at the end of Israel’s search for the remains of the last captive in Gaza.The Rafah border crossing with Egypt in October 2023. Israel agreed to allow the crossing to reopen as part of the cease-fire deal struck in October. Credit...Samar Abu Elouf for The New York TimesJan. 26, 2026, 8:02 a.m. ETIsrael has said that it will reopen the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt within days for travelers on foot, a move that would allow Palestinians who fled the enclave during the two-year war to return home for the first time.Aid officials said they hoped that the reopening of the border crossing would also allow them to evacuate those in Gaza who need medical care abroad — thought to number more than 18,000 people, according to the World Health Organization.In a social media post early Monday morning, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said that the border crossing, near the city of Rafah, would reopen after the completion of a search in Gaza for the remains of the last captive yet to be returned to Israel — whether that search was successful or not.Israel agreed to allow the Rafah crossing to reopen as part of the cease-fire deal struck in October. But Israeli leaders demanded that Hamas first returned the remains of all deceased Israelis and foreign nationals in Gaza.The latest announcement by the prime minister’s office appeared to lower the bar for the change at Rafah.“The reopening of the crossing was conditioned upon the return of all living hostages and a 100 percent effort by Hamas to locate and return all deceased hostages,” the prime minister’s office said.ImageA Hamas militant at the scene of a search for the bodies of two hostages north of Gaza City in December.Credit...Saher Alghorra for The New York TimesIsrael did not say whether the search for the missing captive’s remains had been aided by Hamas.A focused search began over the weekend for the body of the captive, Ran Gvili, 24, a police officer who was killed defending Kibbutz Alumim in southern Israel during the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023.The Israeli military said that it was searching an area in central Gaza, east of the so-called Yellow Line dividing Israeli-held and Hamas-controlled territory, based on newly refined intelligence about the body’s possible whereabouts. It said that specialized units and other personnel were on the scene, including dental experts and rabbis.The Israeli decision to reopen the border — where both Israel and Egypt are expected to impose tight scrutiny over who crosses — advances the fragile cease-fire with Hamas. Yet the next steps for implementing President Trump’s plan for Gaza, which include disarming Hamas and deploying an international force there, are mired in uncertainty.At least 100,000 Palestinians have left Gaza since the beginning of the war, according to Palestinian officials. Now, many of them must decide whether to return to the enclave, most of which lies in ruins after two years of Israeli bombardment.The Israeli government is still refusing to let foreign journalists into Gaza. It argued in a Supreme Court hearing Monday morning that to do so would put Israeli soldiers at risk even though the cease-fire is more than three months old and Israel has allowed international aid workers to enter the territory.For foreign journalists, Gaza has been off-limits since the start of the war in 2023, except for a small number of reporters invited on carefully controlled, abbreviated visits escorted by Israeli soldiers. A longstanding petition by foreign journalists seeking to report from inside the territory was considered by the Israeli Supreme Court on Monday after numerous delays.In oral arguments, Justice Ruth Ronnen suggested that the Rafah crossing’s reopening could allow foreign journalists to enter Gaza through Egypt. But a lawyer for the Foreign Press Association, Gilead Sher, argued that the group’s 400 members, who include employees of The New York Times, should be able to enter from Israel, where they are based.“We see international aid entering daily to the Strip, we see international aid workers and U.N. workers, and Israelis entering,” along with officials of the World Bank, Mr. Sher said, according to a pool report. “But foreign journalists are prohibited.”A government lawyer, Yonatan Nadav, said that letting journalists into Gaza posed risks to Israeli soldiers, but he agreed to describe those risks only in a closed court session.A lawyer for the Union of Journalists in Israel, Amir Basha, also spoke in favor of letting foreign journalists into Gaza, arguing that they represented a vital and missing source of independent information, alongside the Israeli military and Palestinian reporters in Gaza.“No one is arguing with the aid workers’ value,” he said. “But journalists should not be last, they should be first among equals. Because of the information that journalists offer to the public, it cannot be that the Israeli public’s right to know is last in line.”The Supreme Court did not say when it would issue a ruling.The Rafah crossing lies near what was once the southern city of Rafah, which was largely razed by Israeli forces.For the first nine months of the war, tens of thousands of Palestinians were able to flee to Egypt through the crossing. Some were sponsored by international aid groups who coordinated their exit with Israel and Egypt. Many others paid exorbitant bribes to intermediaries connected with the Egyptian government to secure exit papers.In May 2024, that tenuous escape was cut off as Israeli forces swept along the Gaza side of the border and seized the crossing. Israel and Egypt could not agree on conditions for reopening the border, which has mostly been closed ever since.The closure cut off a key route for severely ill and wounded Gazans seeking medical treatment outside the enclave’s battered health system. Some Palestinians, such as cancer patients needing chemotherapy, died without access to proper treatment.The potential for renewed conflict in Gaza is still very much present. Hamas has entrenched its control over half of the enclave, the Israeli military controls the other half, and most people are still huddled in crowded tent camps or in the rubble of half-destroyed homes.Kamel Ayyad, 53, fled for Egypt in November 2023 with his wife and three daughters. While he said that he hoped to return to Gaza, he noted that most of his friends and acquaintances say that going back now is too risky.“Gaza’s still experiencing a cold war, or an unofficial war — it’s not stable,” said Mr. Ayyad, an official with St. Porphyrius, a Greek Orthodox church in Gaza. “No one wants to gamble with the lives of their family.”But it is far from clear how long Gazans will be able to stay in Egypt, which has made clear that their presence ought to be temporary. “We’re between a rock and a hard place,” Mr. Ayyad said.David M. Halbfinger is The Times’s Jerusalem bureau chief, leading coverage of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. He also held that post from 2017 to 2021. He was the politics editor from 2021 to 2025.Aaron Boxerman is a Times reporter covering Israel and Gaza. He is based in Jerusalem.SKIP