(May 24, 2024 / JNS)
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi agreed to restore the flow of aid to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip during a telephone call with U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday.
Egypt halted U.N. aid deliveries into the southern city of Rafah after the Israeli military took control of the Gazan side of the Egypt-Gaza border. In Friday’s call, el-Sisi agreed to let the aid flow through Israel’s Kerem Shalom crossing near the Egyptian border.
“President Biden welcomed the commitment from President el-Sisi to permit the flow of U.N.-provided humanitarian assistance from Egypt through the Kerem Shalom crossing on a provisional basis for onward distribution throughout Gaza,” the White House stated in its readout of the call. “This will help save lives.”
The Egyptian readout of the call said that the deliveries would consist of “humanitarian aid and fuel” and would continue “temporarily until a legal mechanism is reached to reoperate the Rafah crossing from the Palestinian side.”
That’s true, I was addressing the claim that Egypt lost control of the crossing after their peace deal with Israel.
Israel and Egypt currently share control of the crossing. And until recently, Egypt refused to reopen the crossing. So it’s not accurate to imply that Egypt has no say in what happens, or that Biden’s intervention was irrelevant.