00:00Donald Trump pushes ahead with his ceasefire plan in Gaza.
00:04Reports say Israeli strikes killed at least 29 Palestinians this Saturday.
00:08And that is one of the highest tolls since the October ceasefire agreement was reached.
00:12This latest violence, also coming just a day before the border crossing in Rafah, is set to reopen.
00:19For more, let's speak to our correspondent, Noga Tarnopolski.
00:22She joins us from Jerusalem.
00:25What more do we know about the Saturday's attacks in Gaza?
00:32Well, first is nobody denies the deadliness of it.
00:36And the Israeli army's explanation is double but unverified.
00:41So for now, we have from the Israeli army that the strike was a retaliation against what it calls a blatant violation of the ceasefire conditions.
00:51Yesterday, a cell of Hamas fighters did emerge from a tunnel with the aim of trying to kill Israeli soldiers.
00:59They were unsuccessful.
00:59But the effort to perpetrate this operation or this attack by Hamas did take place.
01:05And the second thing that the Israeli army has said to explain this very high death toll in the last 24 hours is that it was continuing to destroy Hamas infrastructure.
01:17It is important to remember that this explanation, continuing to destroy Hamas infrastructure, remains a valid justification for Israeli military strikes in Gaza under the terms of the ceasefire.
01:30So this is not necessarily a violation.
01:33That said, the Israeli army has provided for now zero evidence that there was terror infrastructure in these places that have been bombed.
01:43And also, it's important to say Hamas is an urban terror group that implanted itself intentionally and deeply in urban areas.
01:54So one of the problems with this ongoing ceasefire, non-ceasefire situation is that almost any place in Gaza can credibly said to contain terror infrastructure.
02:05And that's because a terror group ruled Gaza almost with no challenge for the last 17 years.
02:14And that's the situation we're in now.
02:16So these types of strikes and possibly these types of efforts by Hamas will very likely continue,
02:23even if the United States does succeed in moving the two parties towards phase two of this attack, as they say they're planning to do.
02:31Yeah, Noga, let's talk about Sunday.
02:33On paper, tomorrow at least should be a significant day.
02:36It marks the first major step in that second phase of the ceasefire, the Rafah border crossing due to reopen, limited at first.
02:43What conditions, though, have been attached?
02:46Right, enormous conditions.
02:48And let's also remember that opening the Rafah border crossing, which is a border crossing between Gaza and Egypt,
02:55so not a border crossing that physically touches on Israeli territory, though, of course, it has had a huge impact on Israel
03:02because at different points in the last many years, Rafah has been a main point of smuggling goods into Gaza,
03:10and those have, of course, impacted Israel.
03:12That said, Israel so far, Israel was supposed to have opened the Rafah border crossing in phase one,
03:18just like Hamas was supposed to have released all of Israeli hostages within the first 72 hours.
03:24Neither side completely held to its part of the bargain.
03:27But this announcement, the fourth by Israel, that tomorrow Rafah will open, of course, is being taken much more seriously.
03:33That said, as you just indicated, Israel has imposed conditions on this opening that make it more or less a symbolic opening.
03:43Israel says that it will open on both sides, as Egypt demanded,
03:47but that only 150 people per day will be allowed to cross in total.
03:52That Israel will have to check out each and every one of them individually through Egyptian border control.
04:00So Egypt will get the name and data about an individual, let's say, that will be transferred to Israel, to the security services.
04:08They will have to check out this person.
04:09And that means that every individual crossing through, it could take several days for that individual to get permission.
04:16The ability for anyone to enter Gaza from Egypt is limited to people who previous to the war lived in Gaza.
04:23And again, the same checks.
04:25Plus, Israel says that it's going to open a second, a kind of mirror border crossing right next to Rafah.
04:31And so Israel may say that Rafah is open, but actually oblige anyone wanting to cross through to go through its alternate, let's call it Rafah B border crossing, in which case the first one would become moot.
04:44So right now, it seems to me that this is a symbolic opening, that Israel is at least saying it will abide by the terms of the Trump ceasefire.
04:54But until we don't see General Jeffers or other senior Americans on site truly imposing this, until we don't see another Israeli promise that the Palestinian technocratic governing committee can actually enter Gaza and begin to take over power, until concrete steps aren't taken, I don't think we should expect too much from this announcement about a Rafah border crossing opening.
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