Swiss foreign minister to raise aid groups’ concerns with Israel

Cassis to discuss aid with Israel after seeing aid workers Keystone-SDA

On Wednesday, Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis will raise humanitarian concerns about the Gaza Strip with Israel. On Tuesday evening in Jerusalem, he began a whirlwind visit by meeting representatives of three organisations active in the territory.

“We are facing an information war,” said the head of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA) at the start of the discussion. “It is important for us to have first-hand information,” he added. Around the table were the UN’s provisional humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories, as well as officials from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

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The hour and a half dialogue seems to have been useful. “It was a good discussion,” FDFA spokesman Nicolas Bideau told Swiss news agency Keystone-SDA.

“We were made aware in detail of the challenges of supplying humanitarian aid to the population of Gaza by people working on the ground,” he added. These representatives “have to deal with the Israeli administration every day”. The next step will be to discuss these concerns with Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar on Wednesday morning.

A ‘useful’ meeting

The meeting was also considered useful by the humanitarian community. It provided an opportunity to explain why the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) does not honour humanitarian principles, and why the Swiss public must be made aware of this. And why the few international lorries that have arrived at the Kerem Shalom crossing cannot be unloaded, because the security conditions are no longer met given the current situation.

Cassis is facing growing criticism from all sides for his lukewarm response to the blocking of international aid by Israel. Dozens of people were killed during the first distributions carried out by this US-based Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which had registered a non-operational subsidiary in Geneva.

The shootings were attributed to the Israeli army. Cassis said that “we will never know” who was responsible. On Sunday, the ICRC said it had received most of the wounded from the gunfire. Like Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), it had recently stated that it had treated people who had subsequently died of their injuries as a result of the distributions.

Adapted from French by DeepL/ac

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