Middle East crisis: More countries join US-backed efforts to send aid to Gaza by sea
Britain, the European Union and the United Arab Emirates will join the United States in opening a maritime route for humanitarian aid to Gaza, officials said Friday, as a Western-backed effort to bring urgently needed aid by sea the area seemed to be gathering. momentum.
Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the EU’s executive body, and David Cameron, the British foreign secretary, announced their participation hours after President Biden outlined an American plan to build a temporary floating pier off Gaza’s Mediterranean coast, supporting the shipment of food, water, medicine and other supplies to desperate Palestinian civilians.
Ms von der Leyen said the first ship carrying aid could leave EU country Cyprus for Gaza as early as Friday, with more to follow on Sunday, although it was not immediately clear how or where the ships would unload their cargo or how it would be spread amid Israeli bombardments attacks by hungry Palestinians on aid trucks.
Gaza has no functioning port, its coastal waters are too shallow for most ships and U.S. officials have said it could take 30 to 60 days to set up the floating pier.
At a press conference in Cyprus, Ms von der Leyen gave some details. Israeli officials have said they support the establishment of a maritime corridor as long as the goods can be checked “in accordance with Israeli standards” before leaving Cyprus. Israel has insisted on inspecting shipments to Gaza, arguing that Hamas could divert aid.
Despite the many questions, U.S. and European officials stressed the urgent need to open new routes for aid to Gaza, where aid agencies say 2.2 million Palestinians are facing extreme hunger amid Israeli airstrikes and ground attacks on Hamas. In a joint statementBritain, the EU and the United Arab Emirates said the maritime corridor “must be part of a sustained effort to increase the flow of humanitarian aid and commercial goods to Gaza through all possible routes.”
For months, the United States and others have warned that Israel was not allowing sufficient land aid to Gaza. These concerns have increased in recent days as Palestinian health officials reported that some children in Gaza had died of malnutrition and that the United Nations warned that more than 570,000 people face ‘catastrophic levels of deprivation and hunger’.
Aid officials say sealifts — and limited air drops conducted by the United States and other countries — cannot compensate for the lack of land supply routes. Only left 100 emergency trucks In February, they entered Gaza on average every day via the two open land routes, a fraction of what entered before the war began in October.
“We know the difficulties at the land borders in Gaza,” Ms von der Leyen told reporters.
When Cameron announced that Britain would join the maritime effort, he said in a social media post: “We continue to urge Israel to allow more trucks into Gaza as the fastest way to get aid to those who need it.”
Israeli officials have not said whether they would open more land routes to Gaza as many aid agencies have requested, especially to northern Gaza where aid deliveries have all but stopped due to insecurity. On Friday, Israel said it welcomed the establishment of a maritime corridor from Cyprus and called on other countries to join the initiative.
“The Cypriot initiative will allow the increase of humanitarian assistance to the Gaza Strip after security checks are carried out in accordance with Israeli standards,” Israel’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
President Nikos Christodoulides of Cyprus said that “we must simply open up all possible routes to Gaza,” adding: “As a member of the European Union at the heart of the region, Cyprus has a moral obligation to do its utmost to help alleviate humanitarian problems. crisis.”