At the key intersection of Gaza’s Netzarim Corridor and the Salaheddin Road, US and Egyptian security personnel, armed and wearing military fatigues, inspected vehicles carrying Palestinians, many of them displaced by the war.
On Monday morning, traffic moved slowly to the checkpoint at the crossing, which Palestinians call Martyrs Intersection, and from which Israeli forces withdrew a day earlier.
Ahmed al-Rai said the US and Egyptian officers were “respectful” even if their checks on vehicles were “slow and trying”.
Calling the reopening of the roads a “positive step forward”, Rai said he hoped the intersection would eventually be “fully open without searches by the Americans”.
At the current pace, he explained, “it takes 20 minutes to inspect each vehicle”.
The 50-year-old had to wait five hours before his own turn came, he told AFP.
A source in the Gaza interior ministry confirmed that “under the truce agreement between Hamas and Israel, there are American and Egyptian security personnel” at the junction linking northern Gaza and its south.
A Hamas official had told AFP in recent weeks that private US and Egyptian security companies would be involved in the implementation of the truce agreement, which came into force on January 19.
US news website Axios reported on January 23 that private “US security contractors” would begin “to operate a key Gaza checkpoint and deploy armed guards… to inspect Palestinian vehicles that move from southern Gaza to northern Gaza and make sure no rockets or other heavy weapons are being transferred”.
Gridlock
Axios said the companies would operate within the framework of an international coalition provided for by the truce agreement, with the backing of mediators the United States, Qatar and Egypt.
“There are no Palestinian police on either side of the Netzarim intersection,” said the source in the Gaza interior ministry.
“Israeli forces are not present either”, the source added, but “there are armoured vehicles” just east of the intersection.
Hundreds of cars, tuk-tuks, small lorries and carts crawled up to the checkpoint.
The vehicles, most of them old and sometimes in a sorry state, were loaded with luggage, mattresses and other objects as they negotiated the dilapidated dirt road.
In the middle of the gridlock, made even more difficult by the rain, were Red Crescent vehicles and fuel trucks.
The fragile ceasefire agreement in Gaza halted more than 15 months of indiscriminate Israeli war on the territory and set out arrangements for the release of Israeli captives held in Gaza in exchange for Palestinians in Israeli detention.
This agreement also provides for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from populated areas of Gaza over six weeks and the delivery of humanitarian aid.
Moein Abbas, a 46-year-old resident of Gaza City, said he hopes traffic will be able to move on the Salaheddin Road without inspections.
Freedom of movement
His priorities for the moment are “freedom of movement, continued calm, the delivery of food, the rehabilitation of hospitals, the reopening of schools and the installation of tents or caravans for accommodation, in order to allow a gradual return to normal life,” said Abbas.
The Israeli army withdrew from a part of the Netzarim Corridor weeks ago, allowing hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians to return on foot from the south of the territory to their towns, camps and villages in the north of Gaza.
The passage of vehicles was only allowed on Sunday.
Rafat al-Hassanat, 27, had returned with his wife and daughter to his home southwest of the intersection, but given the scale of destruction, they initially spent the night in a tent next to their destroyed home.
The conditions eventually forced them to shelter in an orphanage, west of Gaza City.
“It’s extremely cold, the children have fallen ill,” he said.
“We want the crossing points to be open as normal,” Hassanat said.
He also criticised a plan by Donald Trump to relocate Palestinians outside of Gaza, which the US president claimed was for their good.
“If he really wants to help us, he must demand that Israel withdraw its forces, open the crossing points and rebuild Gaza,” said Hassanat.
“We want an end to the occupation of Gaza.”
