Numbers tell the story of Israel\u2019s ongoing \u201ccollective punishment\u201d of Palestinians, despite Monday\u2019s (2 February) opening of a Gaza crossing point, as the EU warns sanctions remain on the table.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Israel opened the Rafah crossing point from Gaza to Egypt for six hours per day from Monday, allowing out 50 patients a day, accompanied by two relatives each in what it called a \u201cpilot scheme\u201d.<\/p>\n
A further 50 people will be let in from Egypt, but only if they used to live in Gaza.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Two of those due to leave on Monday were a two-year-old girl with shrapnel wounds to her intestines and a 12-year-old boy blinded by an explosion, according to Al Jazeera.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They will have to walk or be carried between concrete and barbed-wire fences along a 2.5km-long track designated by the Israeli military and to be screened and ID-ed by Israeli authorities, as well as Palestinian and Egyptian officials, and some 20 staff from an EU police mission called Eubam Rafah<\/a>, before getting out to waiting ambulances.\u00a0<\/p>\n But there are some 20,000 Palestinians, including 4,000 children, on a list of urgent cases needing medical care abroad, the Gaza health ministry has said, including 440 people in \u201clife-threatening\u201d condition and thousands of cancer patients.<\/p>\n And it would take between 130 and 400 days for them all to get to an Egyptian hospital at this rate, according to estimates by the AP news agency, while some 1,200 have already died while awaiting evacuation.<\/p>\n At the same time, Israel has blocked M\u00e9decins Sans Fronti\u00e8res <\/a>(Doctors Without Borders\/MSF) as well as 36 other aid groups from working in Gaza<\/a>, after fully destroying 22 out of its 36 hospitals in the war.\u00a0<\/p>\n Lifeline or \u2018illegal collective punishment\u2019?<\/p>\n For her part, EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas called the Rafah opening \u201ca concrete and positive step in the peace plan\u201d and a \u201clifeline\u201d on Monday.\u00a0<\/p>\n British foreign minister Yvette Cooper \u201cwelcomed\u201d the move, adding \u201cmuch more still needs to be done\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n But Kenneth Roth, a US activist who used to head the Human Rights Watch group, said the Rafah arrangements amounted to ongoing \u201cillegal collective punishment\u201d.<\/p>\n The Spanish foreign ministry said the MSF ban violated \u201cbasic moral principles\u201d and reminded Israel to honour \u201cinternational obligations to reduce suffering\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n The wounded aside, Israel is also continuing to kill Palestinians at a rate that drew international rebukes, despite a US-brokered \u2018ceasefire\u2019 on 10 October last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Israeli navy killed a three-year-old boy on Monday when they machine-gunned a tent camp along the coast, where more than two million people now lived due to the Israeli infantry\u2019s control of more than 53 percent of Gaza territory. \u00a0<\/p>\n Israeli strikes also killed two other Palestinians on Monday, Al Jazeera reported, after killing 30 people over the weekend, to bring the post-ceasefire death toll to some 530 people, including more than 100 children. \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe condemn the repeated violations of the ceasefire in Gaza, where hundreds of Palestinians were killed and injured by Israeli strikes over the weekend,\u201d said EU crisis-management commissioner Hadja Lahbib.\u00a0<\/p>\n The foreign ministries of Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the UAE said they \u201cstrongly condemn Israel\u2019s repeated violations of the ceasefire\u201d on Sunday.\u00a0<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the Israeli army admitted, last week, according to Israeli daily Haaretz, that it killed 71,000 people in the war, after repeatedly denying the Gaza health ministry\u2019s figures for the past two and a half years.\u00a0<\/p>\n That number doesn\u2019t include uncounted bodies still buried under rubble or indirect deaths, for instance from malnutrition, contagious disease, and untreated medical conditions.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rafah itself, which was once a city home to 250,000 people, is now fully destroyed, along with 90 percent of all of Gaza\u2019s structures.\u00a0<\/p>\n Reconstruction hinges on US president Donald Trump\u2019s new Board of Peace<\/a>, plans for an International Stabilisation Force<\/a>, and the building of a \u201cNew Gaza\u201d of gleaming tower blocks.\u00a0<\/p>\n But Trump\u2019s board has been boycotted by most EU leaders due to his invitation of indicted war-criminals to join, while few experts believe the force or tower blocks will come to be.\u00a0<\/p>\n Leave Gaza \u2014\u00a0but allowed back in?<\/p>\n And those leaving Gaza via Rafah have no formal guarantee of being allowed back in, with an EU Commission spokesman on Monday in Brussels addressing fears of ethnic cleansing by saying the EU \u201crejects demographic or territorial changes\u201d in the Strip.\u00a0<\/p>\n Gaza aside, the UN noted on 27 January that Israeli violence displaced 37,000 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank in 2025 \u2014 the ninth consecutive year in a row to break previous records for the number of attacks by Israeli settlers.\u00a0<\/p>\n Israel advanced plans for 47,000 new housing units for settlers in the region, in an 81 percent increase over 2024, including 3,400 in a zone called E1, which will cut the West Bank in two when they are built.\u00a0<\/p>\n The EU Commission, last September, proposed the bloc\u2019s first-ever trade and diplomatic sanctions against Israel, before putting them on hold<\/a> when large-scale fighting ended.\u00a0<\/p>\n EU diplomats told EUobserver that commission president Ursula von der Leyen has not formally retracted these, even though she has the unilateral power to do so.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re still technically on the table \u2014 or on the shelf,\u201d one diplomat said.<\/p>\n A commission spokesman said on Monday \u201cwe are following developments on the ground in great attention in light of the measures [sanctions] on the table\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n More EU pressure needed <\/p>\n But a group of 403 former EU diplomats, politicians, and officials said in a joint letter on Sunday this was not good enough.\u00a0<\/p>\n