Zikim crossing in northern Gaza opens for humanitarian aid, Israel says

Zikim crossing, the main entry point into the devastated northern Gaza Strip, has been reopened to allow the flow of humanitarian aid into the region, according to Israeli officials.

The announcement on Wednesday came two months after Israel shut the crossing, and followed repeated calls from United Nations aid agencies to allow aid to flow directly into the hard-hit northern part of Gaza.

Under the ceasefire brokered by the United States, which took effect on October 10, aid deliveries were to be significantly ramped up, with at least 600 trucks a day supposed to enter the Strip.

But volumes have been much less than that, and the UN has warned that the hunger crisis in Gaza remains catastrophic, as aid convoys to the north, where famine was declared in August, face a slow and difficult route from the south.

“Today, the Zikim crossing has been opened for the entry of humanitarian aid trucks into the Gaza Strip,” COGAT, the Israeli Defence Ministry body that oversees civilian affairs in the occupied Palestinian territory, said on X.

COGAT said humanitarian aid entering through Zikim, supplied by the UN and other international organisations, would be subject to the usual Israeli security checks before entry and distributed through the UN.

A COGAT spokesperson told the AFP news agency that the crossing would remain open permanently.

Reopening ‘vital’

Reporting from Deir el-Balah, Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum said it was the first time Zikim crossing had been operational since the implementation of the ceasefire deal, after having been shut down by the Israeli military “under a security pretext”.

The reopening meant that three crossings into Gaza were now open, with Karem Abu Salem (known as Kerem Shalom in Israel) in the south and al-Karara (Kissufim) in central Gaza also operational.

In a recent report, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Aid had said the opening of direct crossings to the north was “vital to ensure that sufficient aid reaches people as soon as possible”.

Attacks, search for captives’ bodies continue

The reopening of Zikim crossing was welcome news in Gaza, where Palestinians endure dire humanitarian conditions more than a month after the ceasefire, as well as ongoing attacks from Israeli forces.

According to Al Jazeera teams on the ground, Israeli warplanes launched three air raids on the city of Beit Lahiya in the north of the Strip, while an area east of the Jabalia refugee camp, also in the north, was targeted with Israeli artillery shelling.

Al Jazeera teams also reported gunfire from Israeli positions stationed east of the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza.

The attacks came as members of the Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s armed wing, and a Red Cross team entered an area within the so-called “yellow line”, demarcating territory under Israeli military control, in an effort to recover the bodies of captives.

Since the US-brokered ceasefire took effect in Gaza, Hamas freed all 20 living captives and returned the remains of 24 deceased, with four bodies yet to be returned to fulfil the first phase of the agreement.

Lead Israeli negotiator resigns ministerial post

As the search for the remaining bodies played out in Gaza, the head of the Israeli delegation in negotiations that produced the ceasefire and exchange deal said he was resigning from his ministerial post.

Ron Dermer, a close aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, announced in a post on X that he was resigning as minister of strategic affairs, a post he had held since 2022.

“What the future holds for me, I do not know. But I do know this: No matter what I do, I will continue to do my part to help secure the Jewish future,” he said.

Dermer did not indicate whether he would continue as lead negotiator in the ongoing talks around the second phase of the Gaza deal.

In a statement on X, Netanyahu thanked Dermer for his “tremendous help to me and the state of Israel” and said he was sure the 54-year-old had “much more to contribute in the future”.