Israeli Forces Seize Key Gaza Crossing Amid Revived Truce Talks

TEL AVIV—Israel sent tanks into Rafah and took control of the Gazan side of a key crossing to Egypt, securing a strategic corridor as high-stakes negotiations for a truce and hostage releases intensified.

Israeli military footage showed its tanks moving in on the Rafah crossing. The development followed a series of airstrikes against Hamas targets and warnings for civilians in the eastern part of Rafah to evacuate to zones in the west, as it ramps up preparations for a military offensive in the border city.

Meanwhile, negotiations toward a cease-fire were set to continue. Hamas officials and mediators from Qatar arrived in Cairo on Tuesday and an Israeli delegation was expected in the Egyptian capital later in the day to discuss the militant group’s terms to pause the fighting for an exchange of dozens of hostages taken on Oct. 7.

Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns was also expected to return to Cairo from Qatar for the talks. Burns is in the region as part of the Biden administration’s efforts to mediate a cease-fire deal.

Israel’s military said the border-crossing operation was “very precise and limited in space,” and aimed at eliminating Hamas militant infrastructure after the group fired rockets and mortars at the Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom border crossing on Sunday, killing four soldiers and wounding several others. Israel said that crossing, one of two main entryways for aid into Gaza along with the Rafah crossing, remained closed on Tuesday.

Hamas’s military wing claimed responsibility Tuesday morning for another rocket barrage on Kerem Shalom, signaling it was refusing to back down. The Israeli military said rockets and mortars had been fired at Israeli territory from Rafah but there were no injuries.

The move to take the Rafah crossing has a lot of symbolic as well as strategic value, showing Israel can operate where it likes. Analysts say the increased military activity in Rafah is directly tied to the negotiations and aimed at increasing pressure on the militant group.

“If Hamas will not go into a deal, Israel is keen to go further into Rafah,” but could potentially stop with the crossing, said Israel Ziv, a former commander of the Israeli military’s Gaza Division.

The Israeli government has maintained from the start of the war that the only way to bring Hamas to the negotiating table is through military pressure. The Rafah crossing operation also positions the military to launch a broader operation if talks collapse completely, although this would require coordination with Egypt.

During the Rafah border-crossing operation, approximately 20 militants were killed, three tunnel shafts were discovered and special forces were continuing to scan the area, according to the Israeli military. An explosives-laden car driving toward Israeli troops was struck. No Israeli soldiers were injured, according to the military.

Hamas called Israel’s operation a “dangerous escalation” that would harm humanitarian aid flow to the city. “We call on the U.S. administration and the international community to put pressure on the occupation to stop this escalation that threatens the lives of hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians in Rafah and the entire Gaza Strip,” it said in a statement.

Israel has long been concerned that the border area with Egypt has been a route for smuggling weapons and people into Gaza and is a critical element of Hamas’s military supply chain. It has pressed for tighter controls in the Philadelphi Corridor, which runs the length of the border, a move that could raise issues with a 1979 peace treaty between Israel and Egypt that limits the troop presence on both sides.

Egypt’s Foreign Ministry in a statement condemned the Israeli operations in Rafah. Egyptian officials familiar with the matter said Israel had informed Cairo in advance about its plan to seize the Rafah crossing on the Gazan side and assured them it would be a targeted military operation. In turn, Egypt warned Israeli officials that any attempt to expand Israeli control across the Philadelphi Corridor wouldn’t be tolerated, the officials said, but they didn’t say what action Cairo would take if that happened.

The Egyptian officials said Cairo was closely monitoring the situation across the border with Gaza but wasn’t immediately bolstering its military presence there. Egypt, worried about a rush of people fleeing a potential Israeli ground offensive in Rafah, had already fortified its border in recent months and deployed more tanks and infantry fighting vehicles to the area to prepare for a potential refugee crisis.

“The corridor is much more important than the four battalions of Hamas that you have in Rafah,” said Ofer Shelah, a military analyst with the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies and a former politician. “Hamas has been resupplying itself and reinforcing itself mainly from the Sinai desert.”

The Israeli military didn’t say how long the operation would last. It said the “vast amount of people” had heeded its call to evacuate eastern Rafah before the operation.

The U.S. has pressed Israel not to attack Rafah, fearful of the humanitarian toll. More than one million Palestinians are currently sheltering in Rafah, most of them displaced from their homes in other parts of the Gaza Strip during the seven-month war.

For the past several weeks, the Biden administration has progressively stepped up pressure on Israel and Hamas to try to secure a six-week cease-fire, which U.S. officials hoped they might find a way to extend through further diplomacy.

More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the offensive in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to Palestinian authorities, who don’t specify how many were combatants. Israel invaded Gaza after a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7 killed some 1,200 people, most of them civilians, according to Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel needs to break up four remaining Hamas battalions located in Rafah to achieve its goal of destroying the group’s ability to attack Israel and achieve victory in the war.

But some analysts were skeptical that a broader operation in Rafah could achieve this without decisiveness from Israel about who could govern Gaza after Hamas. “It’s a big mistake. The risks are too high and the results are going to be that we hit Hamas but they are going to recover again,” said Ziv.

Carrie Keller-Lynn contributed to this article.