Emergency aid
Von der Leyen: Maritime corridor for Gaza should open at the weekend
Ursula von der Leyen
© Andreea Campeanu/Getty Images
The people of Gaza urgently need more food and relief supplies. They should also be delivered by sea by ship. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced the relief measure would begin at the weekend.
According to EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, the planned sea corridor for additional aid deliveries to the Gaza Strip is due to start shortly. “We are now close to opening the corridor – hopefully this Saturday, this Sunday,” von der Leyen said on Friday in a meeting with Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulidis.
Von der Leyen and Christodoulidis met in the Cypriot port city of Larnaca. The aid deliveries to Gaza should start from there. According to von der Leyen, the project is backed not only by the EU but also by the United Arab Emirates and the USA, with the EU country Cyprus playing a key role.
Great Britain takes part in establishing the corridor to Gaza
Cyprus has been trying for months to send aid deliveries to the Gaza Strip by ship. A ship was set off for the first time in January, but had to land in Egypt because the ports along the Gaza Strip do not offer sufficient draft for large ships.
To solve the problem, the US military and international partners now want to set up a temporary port on the coast of the Palestinian territory. Large ships loaded with relief supplies should be able to dock there. The capacity is expected to allow hundreds of additional truckloads of relief supplies per day.
There should be interim solutions until the temporary port is built. The aid deliveries could, for example, be reloaded off the coast onto smaller boats or transported to Israel or Egypt and forwarded from there. The fact that the aid deliveries go through an EU port is intended to prevent other goods such as weapons for the terrorist organization Hamas from being smuggled into the Gaza Strip.
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The background to the distress in the Gaza Strip is massive bombings and a ground offensive by Israel in the coastal area. The military is reacting to the worst massacre in Israel’s history, in which terrorists from the Islamist Hamas and other extremist groups murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped 250 in Israel on October 7th. Israel’s military offensive has killed more than 30,000 people, according to the Hamas-controlled health authority. According to the army, there are around 10,000 terrorists among them.