OPINIONS

Tue 27 Jan 2026 9:50 am - Jerusalem Time

Equation: Did Witkoff ask Netanyahu for the prison key? It's no use wearing the agal and shoes together

In the midst of what is called the second phase of US President Donald Trump's plan, and the announcement in Davos of the names of the members of the so-called Peace Council, also headed by Trump, his most important envoys, "Witkoff and Kushner," are sent to Israel for the Rafah crossing.
   Not for Gaza, emerging from the smoke of genocide, hunger, wounds, and the bitter and deadly cold, nor for Rafah, which has almost been razed to the ground, and after its invasion has become as if it were a large cemetery with "Here was Rafah" written on its gate.
   We delude ourselves greatly and for a long time that we are, in the aforementioned context, in front of the Rafah crossing, only to discover, without embellishment, that we are not in front of the crossing, but in front of the "opening" of the crossing; how many hours a day, how many are allowed to leave and how many are allowed to enter – it is certain that the number of entrants will be less than the number of those leaving, who will be in charge of it from the Palestinian side and from the other side, who will allow those departing to leave and those arriving to enter, who will inspect the bags, their number and the allowed kilograms, and who will conduct the investigations and sometimes arrests, do you have a relationship or kinship with names of resistance leaders, and what is the stamp that will be used to stamp the travel document, and who is the authority authorized to issue or renew it, and how much money is allowed to be brought in, including jewelry, ornaments, and gold, the fees and their amount, and how much Israel will charge for its "services," as it does nothing for free, where will the arrival go, does he have a place to stay, does he have a tent, is his address inside the yellow, green, or red line, when does Israel have the right to close the crossing, except for its holidays, or is this procedure exclusive to it and no one has the right to know it, as with the "Karama" Bridge crossing, which its crossers say has no dignity at all.
  It is certain that Witkoff and Kushner did not discuss all of these details, as these will be left to technicians and technocrats, but they also did not discuss how Israel will stop treating Rafah and the rest of the Strip as a large prison, and more than two million people as permanent terrorist prisoners, and the crossing as a gate to this prison. And for Witkoff and Kushner to have done something of this sort, they must then take the key to the crossing from Netanyahu and hand it over to Ali Shaath.
   A Bedouin tribal elder from Jordan told me that after the Oslo peace, he decided to visit his relatives in Beersheba for the first time since its occupation. At the Karama Bridge, the female soldier asked him to take off his shoes and agal. He told her that it is not permissible to put the agal and shoes in one container together, but she insisted on the necessity of the security check, so he decided to cancel the visit and return, with an early realization that this peace was a farce.
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We delude ourselves greatly and for a long time that we are, in the aforementioned context, in front of the Rafah crossing, only to discover, without embellishment, that we are not in front of the crossing, but in front of the "opening" of the crossing; how many hours a day, how many are allowed to leave and how many are allowed to enter  



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Equation: Did Witkoff ask Netanyahu for the prison key? It's no use wearing the agal and shoes together

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