Consider This from NPR - Egypt's Border with Gaza Opened for a Select Few

Episode Date: November 1, 2023

After weeks of being bombarded by Israeli airstrikes, following the Hamas attacks of October 7th, some in the Gaza strip are finally able to leave the besieged territory.Hundreds of people – including wounded Palestinians and individuals with foreign passports – have now crossed into Egypt.The opening of the Rafah Border is a small diplomatic success in a war that has claimed the lives of thousands of civilians. But it's unclear just how many people will be allowed to make the crossing. Consider This co-host Mary Louise Kelly speaks with NPR's Aya Batrawy, who's in Dubai and has been reporting on the situation.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

After weeks of being bombarded by Israeli airstrikes, some in the Gaza Strip are finally able to leave the besieged territory. Hundreds of people, including wounded Palestinians and individuals with foreign passports, have now crossed into Egypt. And, you know, until now, Egypt had not opened its border to anyone wanting to leave Gaza since this war began, which followed the Hamas attacks on October 7th. Jamila Mahassan, a 24-year-old doctor who has a Bulgarian passport, was one of those allowed to leave. It's not the greatest feeling, to be honest. It's like I'm running away with my life, you know? Okay, I've lost a house, but I have family here, have friends here, and it's not okay to just leave a burning city away, you know? I'm not 100% like okay with it, but here I am doing it, you know? Though not everyone with a foreign passport has been able to leave.

Our producer Anas Baba in Gaza also spoke with Wafa Abu Ziaida, who's an American citizen. If you're not going to go out today, are you going to be devastated? No. Broken heart? No. I'm already past the devastation and the disappointment and the whole... There is no word in the dictionary right now. Her sister-in-law, however, was on the list. Well, my sister-in-law, she's a Jordanian, so we're waiting if she goes and if she arrives.

At least one of us. We want to save at least one. Please, God. Consider this. Egypt's opening of the Rafah border is a small diplomatic success in a war that has claimed the lives of thousands of civilians. But it's unclear just how many people will be allowed to make the crossing. From NPR, I'm Elsa Chang. It's Wednesday, November 1st. It's Consider This from NPR. A few hundred people were allowed to leave the Gaza Strip and enter neighboring Egypt for the first time since the war broke out after an attack by Hamas militants nearly a month ago. President Biden tweeted, Today, thanks to American leadership, we secured safe passage for wounded Palestinians and for foreign nationals to exit Gaza.

It appears some Americans working for aid groups got out and still negotiations remain fluid and complex. Our co-host Mary Louise Kelly spoke with NPR's Aya Batraoui, who's in Dubai and has been reporting on the situation. Okay, so obviously a key player here is Egypt. It was their border. Its leaders have been very hesitant to open that border with Gaza. What made it work today? Well, first, these are really small numbers. We're talking just like maybe over 300 foreigners, and they're going to be moving on to another country.

They're not staying in Egypt. And this stance of allowing Palestinians who are wounded in Israeli wars in Gaza to come into Egypt for treatment, that's not new. It's happened in the past. And Egypt isn't saying that they won't open their border for wounded people, and some of them to be treated in Egypt or for foreign nationals to leave. But they're saying is they're not going to open their border for all of Palestinians in Gaza to come and settle in the northern Sinai region. They're worried that could be turned into a place of resistance against Israel, dragging Egypt into the war. And they also say like, you know, we're worried that this would become permanent. And there are also Palestinians who say they don't want to lose their homes or land, but they don't have anywhere to go.

But yeah, we did see several dozen Palestinians leaving today and getting treatment in government hospitals in Egypt. Well, and stay with this, that this is kind of a trickle of the many people who would like to be exiting Gaza. It prompts me to wonder what took so long and what might it take to get all the others still trapped in Gaza out? Well, Egypt blames Israel for the holdup, saying it bombed that crossing multiple times and shelled it.

Israel blames Hamas, saying that they blocked people from leaving. NPR's producer Enes Baba was there at the crossing on the Palestinian side today, met with Americans who unsuccessfully tried to get out. And they say that wasn't true. Hamas just wasn't at the border in past times when they tried to leave. And there are up to 600 Palestinian Americans in Gaza. But Egypt wanted this to be organized on the Palestinian side of the crossing today. And so there were Hamas officials from the Interior Ministry

and the Border Patrol organizing that effort. And also Qatar had influence with Hamas, and they were able to help negotiate all of this. Okay, so you've just introduced another key player, the country of Qatar. How are they involved here? Well, Qatar for years has paid tens of thousands of civil servants like teachers and doctors in the Hamas-run government, despite Israel and the U.S. saying and designating Hamas as a terrorist organization. But supporters of this policy in Israel say that it was meant to sort of keep Hamas from escalating attacks against Israel,

and detractors say it was a policy that was meant to divide Palestinian factions and weaken the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. But Qatar has long had this policy of talking with groups that the U.S. and Europe don't want to deal with directly, like the Taliban in Afghanistan. And my understanding is that these negotiations were an agreement between Egypt, Hamas, and Israel, mediated by Qatar in coordination with the U.S. So very complex, as you mentioned. Very complex. But I'll end with a simple question, which is, where does this leave all the people still stuck in Gaza? I mean, this is a tiny fraction of Gaza's residents. Let's take this one figure, for example. There are something like 2,000 people

with cancer in Gaza who can no longer access the treatment they need because the one hospital that could shut down today, it ran out of fuel and was damaged in an Israeli airstrike yesterday. So there are just 19 hospitals in all of Gaza barely functioning. 16 have shut down. So this border opening for 46 wounded Palestinians and a few hundred foreign nationals and aid workers doesn't help the millions facing bombs and the more than 22,000 wounded in Gaza. That was my co-host Mary Louise Kelly speaking with NPR's Aya Batraoui. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Elsa Chang.