Palestine: MSF statement on the EU’s failure to protect people in Gaza again
EU silence fuels Gaza’s crisis as Israel blocks aid and kills civilians daily.
EU foreign ministers have once again refused to take substantial action to end the deliberate and systemic destruction of Palestinian lives in Gaza, making them complicit in the genocide that the Israeli authorities are committing.
While EU leaders issue misleading statements after their July 15 meeting on Gaza and the EU high representative, Kaja Kallas, claims that there are “positive signs” that aid will be delivered, Israel continues to bomb children seeking water, shoot people collecting food and starve everyone else through its siege and collective punishment.
Israel could ensure Palestinians have enough food, water and medicine tomorrow if it wished to, but instead it continues its stranglehold on Gaza. Meanwhile, as EU leaders fail to address the siege imposed by Israel, they also lack the courage and humanity to pressure the Israeli authorities to stop the daily killing of innocent people.
On June 16, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) sent an open letter with a very clear message to EU leaders: The EU has the political, economic and diplomatic means of exerting real pressure on Israel to stop mass atrocities and to immediately open Gaza’s border crossings for humanitarian assistance. The people of Gaza cannot wait any longer; EU member states must urgently turn words into action to stop the deliberate erasure of Palestinians in Gaza.
MSF colleagues have worked tirelessly and under critical conditions for almost two years now. Twelve of them have been killed by Israeli forces.
Our teams regularly receive patients with gunshot wounds, many who have been attacked at food distribution sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Almost 800 people have been killed while trying to get food to survive at these distribution sites.
How many more lives have to be lost before the EU takes action? Which additional breaches of International Humanitarian Law need to happen before Israel’s atrocities against the people of Gaza are brought to an end?
