Rafah

Overview

Rafah is a city in the southern Gaza Strip, at the border with Egypt. Its position on the land route between Gaza and Egypt has shaped its history for more than three millennia. Ancient armies fought for the frontier town; modern governments established border controls there; and Hamas, a terrorist organization, used the surrounding border area for weapons smuggling and military operations against Israel. The Rafah crossing has chiefly served people traveling between Gaza and Egypt, although limited goods and humanitarian aid have also passed through it. The adjacent Philadelphi Corridor became a central military objective during Israel’s 2024 campaign against Hamas. ^[1][2]

Israel’s May 2024 operation followed the October 7 attacks, in which Hamas invaded southern Israel, murdered civilians and soldiers, and abducted hostages into Gaza. Four Hamas battalions remained in Rafah, alongside tunnels used to move fighters, store weapons and hold captives. About 1.4 million people were in the city when the operation began, including more than one million who had moved there during the war. The concentration of civilians made evacuation and the movement of aid major concerns as Israeli forces advanced. ^{[2][3][9][10]}

Geography

Rafah lies near the Mediterranean coast, about 35 kilometers south of Gaza City. Its location marks a transition between cultivated land and the desert route into Sinai. Ancient Rafah included an inland town and a coastal landing place at present-day Tell Rafāḥ. The modern border divides the built-up area between Gaza and Egypt, while the Philadelphi Corridor follows the Gaza side of the frontier. Parts of that border area pass through Rafah; its eastern and western ends are largely rural. These features have made the city both a gateway for travel and a point of control over movement between Gaza and Egypt. ^[5][8]

The Rafah crossing connects Gaza directly with Egypt. Under the arrangements made after Israel’s 2005 disengagement, it was Gaza’s only crossing outside Israel’s direct control. Its principal function was passenger movement, with smaller volumes of goods and aid. That distinction mattered for security: controlling tunnels beneath the border could not, by itself, control what moved overland through the terminal. The Israel Defense Forces identified movement through the crossing as a main route for weapons smuggling. Hamas also used the border near Rafah to bring weapons and goods into Gaza for its war against Israel. ^[1][2][7]

Ancient and biblical history

Rafah’s earliest recorded name is Rph, found in an inscription of the Egyptian pharaoh Seti I around 1300 BCE. The town also appears in Papyrus Anastasi I and an inscription of Shishak. As a frontier settlement on the route to Egypt, it repeatedly became a battlefield between Egypt and neighboring powers. Rafah is not named in the Bible; later Aramaic Targums identified it with Hazerim. Its early history reflects the importance of the road linking Egypt with Gaza and the wider Levant. ^[5][8]

In 721 BCE, Sargon of Assyria defeated Sibʾe of Egypt and Hanno of Gaza at Rafah. The Assyrian army burned the town and deported 9,033 inhabitants. Rafah remained strategically important in the Hellenistic era. Antigonus attacked it in 306 BCE during the wars among the successors of Alexander the Great. Armies seeking to control the passage between Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean continued to meet near the town. ^[5]

Alexander Yannai later conquered Rafah, bringing it under Hasmonean rule. Roman general Pompey captured the town in 63 BCE, ending that period of Jewish control. Rafah was restored under Roman rule, and a new civic era was dated from 57 BCE. In late antiquity it became an episcopal see: a bishop from Rafah was represented at the Council of Ephesus in 431 CE, and the see remained active during the fifth and sixth centuries. These successive changes in rule did not erase Rafah’s role as a settlement on the route to Egypt. ^[5][8]

Jewish history

Jewish presence in Rafah dates to the Hasmonean era, spanning the period from 167 to 63 BCE. The community endured through later changes of government and flourished in the ninth and tenth centuries. During a decline in 1080, Jews left Rafah for Ashkelon; a Jewish community again flourished in the twelfth century. A Samaritan community also lived in medieval Rafah. The city’s history therefore includes longstanding Jewish and Samaritan communities as well as the rulers and armies that crossed its frontier. ^[5][8]

In the early twentieth century, Zionist groups attempted to establish a Jewish settlement in Rafah. Zionism is the Jewish people’s national movement for self-determination in their historical homeland, the Land of Israel. During the British Mandate period, British authorities used detention camps at Rafah to confine Jewish leaders. After Israel’s War of Independence, Arab refugees settled in former British camps in the Rafah area, adding to the growth of the modern city. ^[8]

Modern history

Rafah’s modern frontier was shaped before the establishment of Israel. In April 1906, Britain issued an ultimatum demanding an Ottoman–Egyptian border running between Aqaba and Rafah. The line gave the town a lasting role in the administration of movement between Sinai and Gaza. During the 1956 Sinai Campaign, Israel’s Golani Brigade was assigned to capture the Rafah area and open a route into Egypt for Israeli armored forces. Israel took control of Rafah during the campaign and withdrew the following year. Israeli forces took control again in the 1967 Six-Day War. Israel’s withdrawal from Sinai in 1982 left Rafah divided between Egypt and Gaza. ^[5][8]

Border coordination was a recurring part of the arrangements that followed the Oslo Accords. The Gaza–Jericho arrangements provided for two Israeli-led joint patrols in al-Mawasi, at the Khan Yunis and Rafah fishing wharves, and along the coast road. The Khan Yunis district office also had subordinate Joint Liaison Bureaus at the Sufa crossing point and Rafah terminal. These provisions placed Rafah within a wider system for coordinating security and movement around Gaza. ^[1]

Israel disengaged from Gaza in September 2005. Two months later, Israel and the PLO-led Gaza administration signed the Agreement on Access and Movement. The agreement assigned operation of the Rafah crossing to that administration and called for expanded operation of Gaza’s crossings with Israel. Its security forces took control of Rafah in late November 2005, gaining their first authority over an international border crossing. The European Union established the EU Border Assistance Mission at Rafah, known as EUBAM, to supervise operations and train local border personnel. EU, Israeli and local representatives monitored the terminal through a live video and data feed at Kerem Shalom. ^[1]

The initial crossing arrangements substantially increased travel. From November 2005 through June 2006, Rafah opened every day except one, for more than nine hours daily. An average of 650 people crossed each day, nearly twice the rate during the preceding six months. The system depended on local security forces, EU supervision and cooperation among the parties. It did not continue after Hamas violently seized power in Gaza in June 2007: EUBAM suspended its operations at Rafah. Reopening the terminal alone could not restore the full supervised system established in 2005. ^[1]

Armed disorder had already affected Rafah before Hamas’s seizure of power. Ahead of the 2006 election, Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades disrupted party primaries, seized election offices and the Rafah border terminal, and kidnapped foreign aid workers. Later, a Hamas-organized protest at the crossing led to clashes on the border that killed an Egyptian soldier and a demonstrator from Gaza. In August 2009, Al-Qassam operative and policeman Ayman Khaled Ibrahim Abu Sibleh died while fighting rival jihadis at Rafah’s Ibn Taymiyyah mosque. These events show how control of the terminal and the city’s armed groups became entangled with Gaza’s internal struggles. ^[1][8]

Egypt also treated Rafah as a security concern. In 2011, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi sought and received Israel’s approval to deploy Egyptian forces to Al-Arish, Rafah and Sheikh Zuweid, as he disclosed in March 2023. In July 2012, Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi met Hamas leaders to discuss Gaza’s energy crisis and Hamas’s demand to remove restrictions at the crossing. Egyptian security operations in Sinai that August focused on destroying smuggling tunnels into Gaza and reinforcing forces near Rafah. Egypt later strengthened its border and crossing infrastructure to restrict movement from Gaza into its territory. ^[1][4]

Security

Hamas built Rafah into a military stronghold. Its Al-Qassam Brigades maintained four battalions in the city, held Israeli hostages in underground networks in Rafah and southern Gaza, and used tunnels for weapons storage, smuggling and the movement of fighters. The Rafah Brigade took part in the October 7 invasion of southern Israel alongside other Hamas units. An official Al-Qassam obituary also identified Mohammad Sami Jarghoun as a member of the brigade. Rafah’s position beside Egypt gave Hamas access to both underground routes and the overland crossing; securing the border required attention to both. ^[2][7][10]

After the October 7 attacks, Israel’s war against Hamas reached Rafah in stages. American and Egyptian opposition delayed a move against the remaining Hamas force and the smuggling routes near the Philadelphi Corridor and crossing. The planned operation produced a major disagreement between Israel and the Biden administration over its military objectives, civilian safety and Gaza’s postwar governance. Egypt moved about 40 tanks and armored personnel carriers to northeastern Sinai near the border as Israel prepared to operate. Concerns also extended beyond Egypt: during a 2024 visit to Cairo, Kuwait’s Emir Mishal discussed the planned Rafah operation and the Houthi threat to Red Sea shipping with President el-Sisi. ^[3][4]

Israel began a phased Rafah operation in early May 2024. Its objectives included dismantling the four Hamas battalions and their commanders, destroying their tunnels, blocking future weapons smuggling along the Egyptian border, and taking the Rafah crossing out of Hamas’s control. The operation had a concrete military purpose, but the city’s civilian concentration required measures to direct people away from fighting. Israeli forces issued evacuation instructions through messages, flyers and social media, initially directing residents of eastern Rafah toward expanded humanitarian areas. More than one million people had moved to Rafah during the war, contributing to an estimated population of about 1.4 million at the start of the operation. ^[3][7][9]

Combat began amid continued attacks from the Rafah area. Hamas fired 14 rockets toward Beersheba on May 10, 2024: nine from Rafah and five from central Gaza. The Israeli Air Force struck two Rafah launch sites after the attack. Israeli forces subsequently took the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing and the Philadelphi Corridor, then worked to dismantle Hamas’s organized fighting force in the city. In late June, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reported that Israel had dismantled four Hamas battalions in Rafah and that the operation was nearing its end. ^[10][11][12]

The fighting also affected movement of aid. Egypt briefly closed the Rafah crossing during Israel’s operation and later reopened it after pressure from US President Joe Biden. Closure of that terminal did not eliminate other routes: Egyptian aid could move through Israeli crossings, and trucks from Egypt entered Gaza through Kerem Shalom on May 26, 2024. Egypt also sent 500 tons of military aid by truck through the Rafah border crossing. Border access remained a subject of negotiations, with Egypt making reopening Rafah conditional on the return of security forces from the PLO-led administration. ^[1][16]

On September 12, 2024, the Israel Defense Forces declared Hamas’s Rafah Brigade defeated as an organized formation. Military officials reported at least 2,308 Hamas operatives killed and about eight miles of tunnels destroyed during the campaign. Forces found 203 interconnected tunnel sections near the Philadelphi Corridor. Nine crossed into Egypt, and each of those nine had already been blocked by Hamas or Egypt when Israeli troops found it. Those findings distinguished the threat posed by underground passages from the continuing security importance of the overland Rafah crossing. ^[13]

Rafah was also a place of hostage rescue and recovery. Israeli forces rescued Fernando Simon Marman and Luis Har from Hamas captivity there in February 2024; Hamas had abducted both men from Israel on October 7. In September, Israeli forces recovered the bodies of six hostages murdered by Hamas in a tunnel beneath the Rafah area: Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Alexander Lobanov, Almog Sarusi and Ori Danino. Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, an architect of the October 7 attacks, was killed during an encounter with Israeli troops in Rafah on October 16, 2024. Israeli officials confirmed his identity the following day. ^[14][15][16]

Present day

Rafah’s importance extends beyond the 2024 campaign. The crossing remains central to movement between Gaza and Egypt, while control of the border affects the prospect of Hamas rebuilding its weapons supply. Hamas made Israeli withdrawal from the Philadelphi, Netzarim and Rafah corridors a condition in ceasefire negotiations. Israel’s operations also affected the wider regional confrontation: after the Rafah campaign was announced, Hezbollah called for a general mobilization of its forces. The city thus remained connected to both Gaza’s immediate security arrangements and the broader conflict involving Israel’s enemies. ^[2][6][7]

Fighting around Rafah continued after the declared defeat of its four battalions. During a later operation, Netanyahu described the new Morag Corridor north of Rafah as a “second Philadelphi” intended to increase pressure on Hamas to release hostages. On May 13, 2025, an Israeli strike in nearby Khan Yunis killed Hamas leader Muhammad Sinwar and Rafah Brigade commander Muhammad Shabana. The strike was outside Rafah, but the death of its brigade commander underscored the continuing importance of Hamas’s forces associated with the city. Rafah’s ancient role as a frontier town remains visible in the modern contest over its crossing, surrounding routes and border security. ^[2][17]