Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has agreed to open the Rafah crossing into Gaza to allow a first batch of humanitarian aid trucks through, US President Joe Biden said Wednesday, October 18.
"He agreed to... let up to 20 trucks through, to begin with," Biden told reporters after calling Sisi from Air Force One while returning from a visit to Israel, where he was showing solidarity after the October 7 Hamas attacks. The American President said roads near the crossing would first need hours of repairs because of the fighting, but that aid could begin rolling into the region by Friday.
The US leader said the UN would distribute the aid on the other side, and that a second tranche was possible depending on "how it goes." But he warned: "If Hamas confiscates it, doesn't let it get through ... then it's going to end."
Biden had been due to meet Sisi on Wednesday at a four-way summit in Jordan, but it was canceled after a deadly strike on a Gaza hospital that caused anger across the Arab world. "The bottom line is that he (Sisi) deserves some real credit because he was very accommodating," the US president added.
Aid moving into Gaza will accomplish a key objective for Biden, and the White House announced that the president will address the nation from the Oval Office on Thursday night to "discuss our response to Hamas’ terrorist attacks against Israel and Russia’s ongoing brutal war against Ukraine."
It was not clear yet whether the humanitarian aid would include fuel that could power the generators keeping open the hospitals that are flooded with injured.
Allowing aid into the region had been seen by US officials as a critical step toward the cooling of tensions in Arab nations after the blast at the hospital, which had been treating wounded Palestinians and sheltering many more who were seeking a refuge from the fighting.