Umm Abdallah – Abdallah’s mother – as the 70-year-old only calls herself, is back in the Gaza Strip. On Tuesday she crossed the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. It was only reopened to passenger traffic the day before after being closed for months. Umm Abdallah says she was treated in Egypt for three months. She doesn’t explain what exactly is wrong with her. But the old lady only has one eye.
She is one of only 16 people who crossed the border into Gaza on Tuesday. Up to 50 people will be allowed to enter Gaza from Egypt every day. And 50 sick and disabled people, each with two accompanying persons, should be allowed to travel to Egypt every day.
The fact that the border crossing must be reopened is part of the 20-point plan of the US administration under Donald Trump. Actually, it should have been reopened with the start of the relative ceasefire. But Israel had insisted that all Israeli hostages, alive or dead, be returned first. At the end of January, Israeli security forces found the body of police officer Ran Gvili in a cemetery in northern Gaza. The condition was thus fulfilled.
But the pressure on Israel to open the border had already increased significantly, reported for example Times of Israel: The states involved in the peace process – the USA, Egypt, Qatar and Türkiye – simply announced the opening during the World Economic Forum in Davos in mid-January. The charter for Trump’s “Peace Council” was signed in the Swiss ski resort, which, according to its own statements, wants to advance peace processes in the world, but is criticized by many European states, including Germany, as a competitor organization to the United Nations.
25 border crossings into Gaza on Wednesday
In any case, the opening of the border in Rafah got off to a slow start: twelve Gazans returned to their homeland on Monday, 16 on Tuesday, and 25 on Wednesday, according to a report by the Qatari media Al Jazeera.
The process works like this: Anyone who wants to get out of the Gaza Strip must register as a patient who urgently needs to leave the country for treatment. The names are then shared with Egyptian authorities, who in turn share them with Israeli security authorities. This is how a source from the taz describes it. Anyone who then receives permission to leave the country is taken by the Red Cross to the border crossing in the neighboring town of Khan Yunis through territory controlled by the Israeli army.
There they are checked and scanned by employees of the EU mission EUBAM Rafah. Apparently there are also German police officers among those sent. Armed forces, with no clear association with a state or organization, are monitoring the scene. Then security forces from the Palestinian Authority check the passports of those leaving the country. The ambulances from the Egyptian Red Crescent aid organization are waiting on the other side of the border.
Roses for Gaza
The process of entering Gaza is more complicated. Umm Abdallah says: It took her three hours to get from the Egyptian metropolis of Cairo to Rafah. The Egyptian Red Crescent waited for her there and gave her, among other things, roses and children’s toys to take with her to Gaza.
Then, she says, she passed the Egyptian side. But the actual process is only beginning on the Gaza side.
The toy that the Egyptians had given her was immediately taken away from her on the other side of the border, says Umm Abdallah
“They took us to an area near Rafah that is controlled by the Abu Shabab militia,” she says. This area lies within the yellow line, i.e. the almost half of the Gaza Strip that is controlled by the Israeli army. This is what was agreed in the ceasefire deal. The areas outside the yellow line, which make up the other half of the Gaza Strip, are controlled by Hamas.
In the Abu Shabab area, two men and a woman were waiting for her and two other Palestinians who crossed the border with her. Umm Abdallah calls the militia “collaborators with the army.” They handcuffed her, blindfolded her and searched her and her belongings. The toy that the Egyptians had given her was immediately taken away from her.
The militia members asked why she wanted to go back to Gaza
And the militia members asked her questions: Why did she want to go back to Gaza? What did she do in Egypt? And that it should tell Hamas to stop using civilians as humanitarian shields. That’s how she tells it. She would also have asked about her son who died in the war. She doesn’t say why he died.
The survey lasted three hours, she says. Your information cannot be independently verified. But they agree with the reports of other returnees. The taz is speaking to over ten of them on this day. The men also say that they were forced to put on the gray prison uniforms in which Palestinian prisoners were released from Israeli prisons as part of the ceasefire.
After more than six hours of procedures, Umm Abdallah is back in the Gaza Strip. She now wants to continue north, to the remains of her destroyed house: “I want to climb over the rubble and kiss the earth.”
An employee of the Ministry of Health, which is subordinate to Hamas, standing nearby calls out, drowning out the old lady: Everything will be rebuilt. The whole of Gaza will be restored.
Rubble on the streets
The construction of the entire Gaza Strip is currently a long way off. There are reports from across the area that rubble is being cleared from the streets, the first buildings are being rebuilt, and some residents are taking renovation work into their own hands.
But in order to begin a real reconstruction, also financed with foreign money – for example from the Gulf states – a political solution is needed: representatives of possible donor nations recently made this clear again, reports the Reuters news agency.
And no such solution is in sight. The second phase of the peace plan has theoretically begun with the transfer of the last hostage to Israel and the opening of Rafah. But now the real work comes: Hamas is to be disarmed in this phase. And despite assurances from the USA that they will comply, there is hardly any such willingness on the part of Hamas.
On the contrary: in the part of the Gaza Strip it controls, it has re-established its control over the population. It collects taxes and duties – on consumer goods, but also on money that is transferred into Gaza. On cigarettes, but also on the ground on which some displaced people have set up their tents. Hamas members repeatedly take public and brutal action against critics and alleged collaborators with Israel. And the Israeli military repeatedly reports that it has sighted Hamas fighters or been attacked by them.
No real ceasefire
The ceasefire is not a real ceasefire either. According to their own statements, Israel’s military repeatedly kills Hamas members and affiliates; including women and children, as reported by the United Nations. A total of over 500 people have died since the ceasefire began on October 10, 2025.
Disarming Hamas is likely to be a mammoth task. In more than two years of war – the conduct of which, according to the International Court of Justice, violated international law – the Israeli army has not managed to actually wrest control of the area.
The Israeli military has destroyed tunnels throughout Gaza and killed leading Hamas figures. The Israeli military has also completely bombed entire neighborhoods in Gaza and blocked aid supplies for months, from the distribution of which Hamas is said to have benefited and probably did.
Nevertheless, armed Hamas units are now patrolling the streets outside the yellow zone again. Hamas units were even active in the yellow zone controlled by Israel.
About 18,500 people are waiting according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Gaza waiting to leave for their treatment. There are around 4,000 children among them. Even if 50 of them were allowed to leave the country every day as planned, it would take over a year for everyone to make it out. Real perspectives look different, as does real peace.