The National Factions’ Follow-Up Committee in Gaza appealed on Sunday to Egypt to open the Rafah border-crossing before thousands of sick civilians and humanitarian cases struck at the terminal.
The calls were launched following a meeting by the Follow-Up Committee which culminated in a total agreement on the need to urgently open Rafah crossing point before stranded Gazans in the besieged coastal enclave.
According to the committee upholding the closure on Rafah crossing will seriously affect Palestinians’ academic career and dampen the spirits of those in need of life-saving treatment and urgent medical referrals.
While the Egyptian border has remained the main lifeline for Gazans to the outside world Egypt’s coup authorities have frequently sealed off movement through the border.
Due to the constraints on Palestinian movement through the crossing many Gazans are commonly barred from leaving or entering the besieged coastal enclave some for months at a time as the crossing is only periodically opened by Egyptian authorities stranding Palestinians on both sides of the terminal.
The decade-long Israeli blockade has plunged the Gaza Strip’s two million Palestinians into extreme poverty and into the highest unemployment rates in the world.
Gaza’s infrastructure has yet to recover from the devastation of three Israeli offensives over the past six years. The slow and sometimes stagnant reconstruction of the besieged coastal enclave has only been worsened by the blockade leading the UN to warn that Gaza could be “uninhabitable” by 2020.
