European Union (EU) officials have criticized Israel for the way it manages the war in Gaza, with more than 31,000 Palestinian deaths, according to figures from the Hamas leaders who control the territory of the strip.
No one, however, had gone as far as Josep Borrell, high representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs, in his appearance this Tuesday at the United Nations Security Council, where he stated that the Israeli government “uses hunger as a weapon of war.” ”.
“If we condemn this happening in Ukraine, we have to use the same words regarding what is happening in Gaza,” he stressed. “As we look for alternatives to provide support, by sea or by air, we must remember that we do this because the normal way of bringing supplies via land routes is closed,” he insisted.
After recalling that Hamas still has more than 100 hostages, as a result of the attack on October 7 in Israeli territory that left 1,200 dead and marked the beginning of Israel’s retaliation operation, the head of European diplomacy denounced that the situation It is “unbearable” and must be urgently alleviated.
“But it must be taken into account that this humanitarian crisis is not caused by a natural disaster, it is not a flood, it is not an earthquake, it is not something caused by nature. It is a humanitarian disaster created by man,” he stressed inside the council room and outside, in an appearance before the press.
Borrell denounced that if before the war 500 trucks entered a day to alleviate the needs of Gaza, under siege for decades, currently less than 100 enter. “Imagine living in a town where, suddenly, supplies are divided by ten and, furthermore, the distribution is complicated because there are military actions every day. So actions can be carried out by sea or by air, but we must not forget the root of the problem and the root is that there are obstacles to normal access to Gaza,” he maintained.
Regarding Western operational capacity, specifically European, its Foreign representative highlighted that humanitarian assistance has been quadrupling since October 7, although the Israeli deployment and its restrictions mean that only a small fraction of what is needed arrives. .
“We must mobilize the international community, but the most urgent thing is for the Israeli authorities to stop preventing access to aid. Distributing supplies from the air, with parachutes, and from the sea (like the praised initiative of chef José Andrés and his organization World Central Kitchen), is better than nothing, but it is not the solution,” he stressed.
“We cannot replace hundreds of tons of food and hundreds of trucks that arrive by road with an air operation. This does not prevent us from seeing what the real problem is and the real issue is that there is not enough access, normal road access.”
And he raised the question addressed, without naming him, to the government of Benjamin Netanyahu: “Why not use the airports, why not open the doors to cars and trucks?”
