Rafah Border Crossing

Infobox Bridge
bridge_name= Rafah Crossing


caption=
official_name= Rafah Border Crossing تقاطع حدود رفح מעבר רפיח
carries=Pedestrians
crosses=Philadelphi Route
locale=flagicon|EGY Rafah, Egypt flagicon|Palestine Rafah, Gaza Strip
maint=flagicon|EGY Arab Republic of Egypt flagicon|Palestine Palestinian Authority flagicon|EU European Union (observer) flagicon|ISR Israel (observer)
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long=The Rafah Border Crossing ( _ar. تقاطع حدود رفح, _he. מעבר רפיח) is an international border crossing between Egyptian and Palestinian-controlled Rafah. It was built by the Israeli and Egyptian governments after the 1979 Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty and 1982 Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula, and was managed by the Israel Airports Authority until it was evacuated on 11 September, 2005 as part of Israel's unilateral disengagement plan. It has since become the mission of the European Union Border Assistance Mission Rafah (EUBAM) to monitor the crossing.

The Rafah crossing was opened on 25 November 2005 and operated nearly daily until 25 June 2006.United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs: "The Agreement on Movement and Access One Year On"] Since that time it has been closed by Israel on 86% of days due to security reasons. It was not opened for the export of goods. In June 2007, the crossing was closed entirely after the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip.

The EU Ambassador to Israel said that EUBAM monitors could not return to man the crossing because the legal basis for EUBAM - the November 2005 agreement on movement and access - specified that the terminal was to be manned by the Fatah-aligned Force 17, who were no longer there. [cite news|url=http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1182951031929&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull |title=EU monitors to stay away from Rafah |author=Herb Keinon |date=June 28, 2007]

On January 23, 2008, masked gunmen demolished the wall, that Hamas-linked militants had apparently weakened in 2007, dividing the Egyptian and Palestinian portions of Rafah,Fact|date=January 2008 and several thousand Gazans entered Egypt, most of them to purchase food and supplies.cite web
url=http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080123/ap_on_re_mi_ea/israel_palestinians
title= Gazans flood Egypt after border breach
last=Barzak
first=Ibrahim
date=2008-01-23
quote=tens of thousands of Gazans flooded into Egypt on Wednesday
accessdate=2008-01-26
publisher=Associated Press]

References

External links

* [http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_1064.html US Consular Information Sheet - Israel, the West Bank and Gaza]
* [http://domino.un.org/pdfs/AMA_OneYearOn.pdf The Agreement on Movement and Access One Year On] United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

ee also

* Philadelphi Route
* European Union Border Assistance Mission Rafah
* 2006 Israel-Gaza conflict