GAZA: The Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt will remain closed until further notice, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, adding its reopening will depend on Hamas handing over the bodies of deceased hostages as the two sides continued to trade blame over ceasefire violations.
Netanyahu’s statement came shortly after the Palestinian embassy in Egypt announced that the Rafah crossing, the main gateway for Gazans to leave and enter the enclave, would reopen on Monday for entry into Gaza.
Netanyahu’s government and Hamas have been trading blame over violations of the US-mediated ceasefire for days. Late Saturday in Washington, the State Department said it had received “credible reports indicating an imminent ceasefire violation by Hamas against the people of Gaza.”
The State Department said the planned attack against Palestinian civilians would be a “direct and grave violation of the ceasefire agreement.”
“Should Hamas proceed with this attack, measures will be taken to protect the people of Gaza and preserve the integrity of the ceasefire,” the department said in a statement, without providing further details.
Trump had said he would consider allowing Israeli forces to resume fighting in Gaza if Hamas fails to uphold its end of the ceasefire deal that he brokered.
The militant group has launched a security crackdown in urban areas vacated by Israeli forces, demonstrating its power through public executions and clashes with local armed clans.
Dispute over aid, return of bodies
Hamas, in a statement late on Saturday, said Netanyahu’s decision “constitutes a blatant violation of the ceasefire agreement and a repudiation of the commitments he made to the mediators and guarantor parties.”
It also said the continued closure of the Rafah crossing would prevent the entry of equipment needed to search for and locate more hostage bodies under the rubble, and would thus delay the recovery and handover of the remains.
Israel said it received two more bodies late on Saturday, meaning 12 out of 28 bodies have been handed over under a US-brokered ceasefire and hostage deal agreed between Israel and Hamas last week.
The war has caused a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, with nearly all inhabitants driven from their homes, a global hunger monitor confirming famine and health authorities overwhelmed.
The dispute over the return of bodies, and shipments of life-saving humanitarian aid, underlines the fragility of the ceasefire and still has the potential to upset the deal along with other major issues that are included in US President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan to end the war.
As part of the deal, Hamas released all 20 living Israeli hostages it had been holding for two years, in return for almost 2,000 Palestinian detainees and convicted prisoners jailed in Israel.
Formidable obstacles to peace
But Israel says that Hamas has been too slow to hand over the bodies of deceased hostages it still holds. The militant group says that locating some of the bodies amid the vast destruction in Gaza will take time.
The deal requires Israel to return 360 bodies of Palestinian militants for the deceased Israeli hostages and so far it has handed over 15 bodies in return for each Israeli body it has received.
Rafah has largely been shut since May 2024. The ceasefire deal also includes the ramping up of aid into the enclave, where hundreds of thousands of people were determined in August to be affected by famine, according to the IPC global hunger monitor.
After cutting off all supplies for 11 weeks in March, Israel increased aid into Gaza in July, scaling it up further since the ceasefire.
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Hamas denies US statement on group’s ‘ceasefire violation’
Hamas rejected on Sunday a statement from the US State Department in which it cited “credible reports” indicating the Palestinian militant group would imminently violate the ceasefire deal with Israel. Hamas said such allegations were false.
Meanwhile, the Israeli military has launched an attack on Gaza, as Israel continued to trade blame with Hamas over violations of the US-brokered ceasefire aiming to end the war in the enclave, Israeli media reported on Sunday. There was no immediate comment from the military or Hamas on the reported attack.
Israeli public broadcaster Kan said the air force was attacking Rafah in the south of Gaza. Most media outlets described the attack as air strikes.
The Israeli military said on Friday that “several terrorists” opened fire on soldiers in the Rafah area, causing no injuries. The military later said it struck another group of “terrorists” that were approaching troops in Khan Younis on the same day. The military would continue to operate to remove immediate threats, it said.
The Israeli government and Hamas have been accusing each other of violations of the ceasefire for days, with Israel saying the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt will remain closed until further notice.
Israel and Hamas have engaged in a row over the return of the bodies of deceased hostages. Israel demanded that Hamas fulfill its obligations in turning over the remaining bodies of all 28 hostages. Hamas has returned all 20 live hostages and 12 of the deceased but said the process needs effort and special equipment to recover corpses buried under rubble.
