A few kilometers from the southern Israeli town of Kerem Shalom, a gate opens onto what is — in theory — Gaza’s commercial lifeline. Trucks carrying flour, cooking gas, medicine, and building materials line up on the Israeli side, wait for security screening, and, if cleared, cross into the Strip. On paper, it is an orderly supply chain. In practice, it has been one of the most consequential chokepoints in the world.
Understanding how Kerem Shalom works — and how routinely it fails the people who depend on it — requires tracing the mechanics of the crossing itself, the legal framework Israel uses to control it, and the human cost when the system breaks down.
How the Crossing Was Built to Function
Kerem Shalom — the name translates roughly as “Vineyard of Peace” — is located at the tripoint where Israel, Gaza, and Egypt meet. It became Gaza’s primary commercial crossing after Israel closed the Karni crossing in 2011. The terminal is operated by the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the Israeli military body that administers civilian affairs in the occupied Palestinian territory.
In its standard configuration, the crossing handles the offloading of goods from Israeli or international trucks onto Palestinian vehicles on the Gaza side — a back-to-back transfer system that prevents Palestinian drivers from entering Israel. Goods pass through an X-ray scanning facility and are subject to physical inspection before being permitted entry. Fuel, which Gaza’s power plant and hospitals depend on, moves through a separate pipeline and tanker mechanism also managed through Kerem Shalom.
Before October 2023, the crossing was processing roughly 400 to 500 trucks per day on its better operating days, according to COGAT data and OCHA monitoring. UN agencies had long documented that this figure fell well short of Gaza’s actual needs. OCHA estimated that a population of approximately 2.3 million people required a minimum of 800 to 900 trucks daily to sustain basic living standards — a threshold that was rarely, if ever, reached even during periods of relative calm.
The Israeli Inspection Regime and the Dual-Use List
Every item entering Gaza through Kerem Shalom is subject to Israeli security screening. The legal basis Israel cites for this control flows from the 2007 closure policy, formalized after Hamas assumed governance of Gaza, which Israel, the United States, and the European Union designate as a terrorist organization. Israel classifies Gaza as a “hostile territory” under Israeli law, a designation that allows COGAT to maintain a prohibited and restricted goods list.
At the core of the inspection regime is the concept of “dual-use” items — materials that have legitimate civilian applications but that Israel argues could also be used for military purposes. The dual-use list has, over successive years, included construction materials such as cement, steel rods, and gravel; certain chemicals used in agriculture and sanitation; water pumps above a specified horsepower; and a range of electronic components. The practical breadth of the list has been documented extensively by Gisha — the Israeli legal center for freedom of movement — which has published the list and challenged its scope through Israeli courts. Gisha’s analyses show that dual-use restrictions have at various points blocked imports of items including coriander, pasta, and musical instruments, illustrating how broadly the concept has been applied.
The result is that Palestinian importers must obtain specific permits for a wide range of goods, and permits can be denied, delayed, or revoked. For humanitarian organizations, the process of obtaining approval — even for medical equipment or water purification supplies — can take weeks, during which the need being addressed does not pause.
After October 7: Collapse and Irregular Reopenings
When Hamas-led fighters breached the Gaza perimeter fence on October 7, 2023, killing approximately 1,200 people in Israel and taking around 250 hostages, Israel immediately sealed all Gaza crossings, including Kerem Shalom. The crossing remained fully closed for several weeks. When it began reopening under international pressure, the volumes permitted were a fraction of the pre-war baseline.
OCHA’s weekly humanitarian updates documented crossing figures that frequently fell below 100 trucks per day in the months following October 2023 — against a need that had grown sharply as the population was displaced and infrastructure was destroyed. The World Food Programme and UNICEF described conditions of acute food insecurity and the risk of famine in northern Gaza in particular, a characterization the UN’s Integrated Phase Classification (IPC) system supported in findings published in early 2024.
The crossing was also physically attacked. In May 2024, a rocket strike attributed to Hamas hit the Israeli side of the Kerem Shalom terminal, killing four Israeli soldiers and damaging infrastructure. Israel suspended operations in response for several days, further interrupting the aid flow. The attack drew condemnation from humanitarian organizations that had themselves been demanding Israel allow greater volumes through the same terminal.
Settler Blockades and Political Pressure on the Crossing
The disruptions have not come only from military operations or security screenings. On multiple documented occasions in 2024, Israeli civilians — including activists associated with far-right settler movement networks — physically blocked the roads leading to the Kerem Shalom crossing, preventing trucks carrying humanitarian aid from reaching the terminal. Footage of these blockades was broadcast internationally, and they were documented by Israeli media outlets and international correspondents on the ground.
Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem described the blockades as part of a broader pattern of impunity in which Israeli civilians obstructed aid delivery without effective law enforcement intervention. The Israeli government, under pressure from far-right coalition partners including ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, was criticized by the United States and European governments for failing to act decisively against the protesters.
The ICJ, in its interim measures ruling in the case brought by South Africa under the Genocide Convention — South Africa v. Israel, January 2024 — ordered Israel to take effective measures to ensure the unimpeded provision of humanitarian assistance to Gaza, a ruling that the blockades appeared to directly contradict.
A Number That Tells the Story
The gap between 500 trucks and 800 trucks may sound technical. For a family in Khan Younis waiting for cooking gas, for a surgeon at Nasser Hospital waiting for sutures, for a water engineer waiting for a replacement pump part held up on the dual-use list, it is not technical at all. Kerem Shalom crossing is, in the end, a physical expression of a political decision about what Gaza is permitted to have — and the arithmetic of that decision has defined life in the Strip for nearly two decades.
Sources
- UN OCHA oPt — Humanitarian Situation Reports and weekly truck entry data
- Gisha — Legal Center for Freedom of Movement: dual-use list documentation and crossing analyses
- B’Tselem — documentation of civilian blockades and impunity
- ICJ — South Africa v. Israel, Provisional Measures Order, January 2024
- World Food Programme — Gaza food security assessments
- UNICEF — Gaza humanitarian updates
- COGAT — crossing volume data (via Israeli government communications)
