The Rafah crossing is Gaza's lifeline to the world. Here's why

CAIRO (AP) — Before the war, the Rafah border crossing was Gaza's only gateway to the outside world not controlled by Israel. It was shuttered when Israeli troops seized it in May 2024.

On Monday, the crossing with Egypt reopened in a long-awaited step of the ceasefire deal in the two-year Israel-Hamas war. And though the reopening was mostly symbolic — only small numbers of people are allowed to cross initially — it provides a glimmer of hope for Palestinians seeking to leave the war-ravaged strip and those wishing to return home.

The Rafah crossing played a key role for the people of Gaza before the war, handling the movement of people and some types of cargo. But after Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, sparking the war, Egypt tightened its restrictions.

The reopening is expected to make it easier for Palestinians from Gaza to seek medical treatment, travel internationally or visit family. The initial numbers allowed to cross, however, are limited to only 50 medical evacuees from Gaza, along with two people escorting them, while 50 Palestinians who fled Gaza during the war can return, according to Israeli and Egyptian officials.

That falls far short of the roughly 20,000 sick and wounded people Gaza’s Health Ministry says need treatment abroad and represents only a fraction of the more than 30,000 Palestinians registered in Cairo to return home, according to an embassy official, speaking on condition of anonymity because talks are ongoing.

Israeli officials have given no indication when a full reopening could happen. They've said crossing restrictions are expected to ease over time if the reopening is successful.

“We hope this will close off Israel’s pretexts and open the crossing,” said Abdel-Rahman Radwan, a Gaza City resident whose mother is a cancer patient and requires treatment outside Gaza.

With much of Gaza turned to rubble, the United Nations has said the Palestinian territory’s population of over 2 million people needs a massive influx of fuel, food, medicine and tents.

How quickly the crossing can scale up operations to allow the passage of goods is likely to have a major bearing on Gaza’s reconstruction.

Also among the unknowns is the expected arrival of the new Palestinian committee of administrators appointed to govern day-to-day affairs in Gaza under the international “Board of Peace” proposed by U.S. President Donald Trump. The committee remains in Cairo, without Israeli authorization to enter.

Palestinians wanting to leave Gaza will have to get Israeli and Egyptian security approval. Egypt has been opposed to Palestinian refugees permanently resettling in that country.

The Gaza side of the Rafah crossing was heavily damaged during the war.

With the current ceasefire deal calling for Hamas to have no role in running Gaza, it’s unclear who will operate the territory’s side of the Rafah crossing once the war ends. Currently, an EU mission is running the crossing with assistance from plainclothes Palestinian security officers — an arrangement similar to when Rafah reopened limitedly during a brief ceasefire at the start of 2025.

Israel has said it will run security checks on Palestinians, once they're inside the zone under the Israeli military's control.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week said there would be no reconstruction in Gaza without demilitarization, a stance that could make Israel’s control over the Rafah crossing a key point of leverage. U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and Middle East adviser Jared Kushner said last month that postwar construction would first focus on building “workforce housing” in Rafah, the enclave's southernmost city, near the crossing.

Associated Press reporters Samy Magdy in Cairo, Farnoush Amiri at the United Nations and Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel, contributed to this report.

Find more of AP’s coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

Juman Al-Najjar, a 3-year-old Palestinian patient, looks out from a vehicle with other patients in Khan Younis as they head to the Rafah crossing, leaving the Gaza Strip for medical treatment abroad, Monday, Feb. 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

Palestinian patient Mohammed Abu Mustafa, 17, accompanied by his mother, Randa, waits to board a bus in Khan Younis before they head to the Rafah crossing, leaving the Gaza Strip for medical treatment abroad, Monday, Feb. 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

Buses line up to enter the Egyptian gate of the Rafah crossing into the Gaza Strip, in Rafah, Egypt, Monday, Feb. 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Mohamed Arafat)

A crane enters the Egyptian gate of the Rafah crossing to the Gaza Strip, in Rafah, Egypt, Sunday, Feb. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Mohamed Arafat)

Palestinian children receive donated food at a community kitchen in Nuseirat, in central Gaza Strip, Saturday, Jan. 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Hold on to those Thanksgiving turkeys! WKRP is coming to Cincinnati — for real this time.

“I cannot, by contract, tell you when. I cannot tell you who. But I can tell you, direct to the camera, WKRP, after 48 years, is coming to Cincinnati,” D.P. McIntire, who runs the media nonprofit that is auctioning the famous call letters, told The Associated Press. “Book it! It’s done!”

The call sign was made famous by “WKRP in Cincinnati,” a CBS television sitcom that ran from 1978 to 1982. It made stars of actors like Loni Anderson and Richard Sanders, whose bumbling newsman Les Nessman reported on a Thanksgiving promotion gone bad when live but flightless turkeys were dropped from a helicopter.

McIntire remembers watching the show’s first episode — featuring disc jockeys Dr. Johnny Fever (Howard Hesseman) and Venus Flytrap (Tim Reid) — in the living room with his parents and older sister.

“And at the end of the 30-minute episode,” he said, “I got up and I proclaimed, `I’m going to be in radio. And if I ever have the opportunity, I’m going to run a station called WKRP.’”

McIntire said he got his first on-air job at 13 as a news anchor at WNQQ “Wink FM” in Blairsville, Pennsylvania.

Fast forward to 2014, when his North Carolina-based nonprofit acquired the call sign from the Federal Communications Commission. Stations in Dallas, Georgia, and Alexandria, Tennessee, previously bore the letters.

McIntire laughs as he recalls his chat with a woman in the agency’s audio division.

He had two sets of call letters in mind. She told him he needed a third.

“Being the jokester that I am, I said, `Well, if you need three, and if it’s available, we’ll take WKRP,’” he said. “And 90 seconds later, she came back and she said, `Mr. McIntire. Congratulations. You’re the general manager of WKRP in Raleigh, North Carolina.’”

WKRP-LP — 101.9 on the FM dial — went live Nov. 30, 2015. The LP stands for “low power,” a class of station created to serve more local audiences that didn’t want mass-market content.

“Our format is what radio used to be 35 years ago in small-town America,” he said. “There is Greats of the 80s, Sounds of the 70s, 90s Rewind.”

LPFM is restricted to nonprofit organizations like his Oak City Media, and it’s definitely local.

“Your broadcast capacity is limited to 100 watts,” McIntire said. “So, your average range is between, depending on your terrain and circumstances, 4 and 12 miles (6 and 19 kilometers) in any direction. Enough to cover a small town.”

And, by necessity, it’s a low-budget affair.

The transmitter is in a corner of McIntire’s garage, between a recycling bin and the cleaning supplies. The broadcast antenna sits atop a 25-foot (7.62-meter) metal flagpole in the backyard. The studio — microphones and a mixing board hooked up to a computer — is in McIntire’s basement.

Like the WKRP of television, McIntire and his partners set out to be “irreverent.” One of their offerings is a two-hour show called “Weird Al and Friends,” focusing on the satirical works of Weird Al Yankovic.

They even had an annual Thanksgiving turkey giveaway. But don’t call the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals — they hand out gift certificates to a local grocery store.

“We don’t toss them out of helicopters,” he said with a laugh.

After more than a decade on the air, the 56-year-old McIntire decided it was time to pass the reins.

“We’re in a position where the older members like me who started the station are turning the leadership over to younger members,” he said. “They’re not interested in radio.”

They put out a call for bids to use the call letters on FM and AM radio, as well as television and digital television.

They intend to use the proceeds for a new nonprofit venture called Independent Broadcast Consultants. He said IBC will be “geared specifically toward helping these new broadcasters get up and running, get the consulting that they need in order to be, hopefully, more successful than we have been.”

Oak City Media was all set to hand off the television-related suffixes — WKRPTV and WKRPDT — when another group defaulted on the agreement, McIntire said. But he said the Cincinnati deal is in the bag, he just can’t legally discuss it.

“It will be radio,” he said. “But that’s all I can tell you at this time.”

Robert Thompson, who uses a season 2 episode of “WKRP” in his TV history class at Syracuse University, said it’s telling that people see real value in a fictional station whose call letters invoke the word “crap.”

“The value comes from the love of the characters for each other,” he said. “And now by buying this thing, the value comes from our love of the characters themselves.”

Whatever they do with the call sign, McIntire hopes they will be true to the show that inspired it.

“It has a special place in the hearts of an awful lot of people,” he said. “And we have been very, very, very proud to have been a steward of that legacy.”

D.P. McIntire leans against a deck beneath the WKRP radio antenna in the backyard of his home in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)

D.P. McIntire points to the transmitter for WKRP radio in a corner of his garage in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)

The WKRP radio antenna sits atop a 25-foot flagpole behind D.P. McIntire's home in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)

A photo of the cast members of the sitcom "WKRP in Cincinnati" sits in a window at the home of D.P. McIntire in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)

D.P. McIntire stands beneath a WKRP banner in the backyard of his home in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)