The Egyptian authorities on Friday opened the Rafah border crossing, which links the Gaza Strip to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, for a two-day period.
On Thursday, Egypt announced that the crossing would be opened for a two-day period starting Friday to allow medical cases in Gaza to seek treatment abroad and to allow Palestinians stranded in Egypt to return to the coastal enclave.
The move comes a month after Egypt abruptly reclosed the crossing after having opened it briefly on Feb. 21.
The Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing is currently run by the Ramallah-based Palestinian government, which took over control of the strip’s border crossings from Hamas last November.
The handover was carried out in line with an Egypt-sponsored reconciliation agreement between Hamas and rival Palestinian faction Fatah (which leads the Ramallah government) signed in Cairo last October.
The Gaza Strip, which has groaned under a crippling Israeli-Egyptian blockade -- by air, land and sea -- since 2007, has seven border crossings linking it to the outside world.
Six of these are controlled by Israel, while the seventh -- at Rafah -- is controlled by Egypt, which has kept it tightly sealed for the most part since former President Mohamed Morsi, Egypt's first freely elected leader, was ousted in a 2013 military coup.
Israel sealed four of its commercial crossings with Gaza in mid-2007 after Hamas wrested control of the coastal territory from forces loyal to Fatah.