The European Union is studying whether it could play a role monitoring the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt after Israel’s war with Hamas ends, officials said Friday.
The 27-nation bloc set up a mission in 2005 to help monitor the crossing, but that was suspended two years later after militant Islamists Hamas took control of Gaza.
“We received demarches from different parties, including Israel, asking whether we could study the possibility to reopen it (the EU mission),” a high-ranking EU official said.
The official said EU Foreign Affairs chief Josep Borrell would likely get a green light from European ministers meeting in Brussels on Monday to draw up options for a potential redeployment of an EU mission.
“Obviously this would not be in the current circumstances, not in war circumstances. We are talking about the future,” the official said.
A European diplomat cautioned that the EU – which has struggled to come to a unified position on the Gaza war – was still at the “very beginning of the possible process” towards launching the mission.
The Rafah border crossing is currently closed by Israel as it carries out an assault on the Gazan city.
Israel in early May launched an assault on Rafah, the last Gazan city to be entered by its ground troops, defying global opposition and sending more than 800,000 people fleeing, according to UN figures.
Troops took over the Palestinian side of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, further slowing the sporadic arrival of trucks carrying badly needed aid for Gaza’s 2.4 million people.
With AFP
