BRUSSELS
European Union High Commissioner for Foreign Relations and Security Policy Josep Borrell has said that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is turning into a war of civilizations and religions.
According to the Turkish news agency, Josep Borrell said in his speech at the opening meeting of the Conference of Ambassadors that Israel-Palestine should do whatever it takes to stop the war.
Josep Borrell has said that the situation on the front is getting worse with each passing day, but despite this, everyone, including the Western countries, is turning a blind eye.
In recent years, agreements between Israel and Arab countries were thought to lead to peace in the region, but this did not happen, he said.
He said that the Israel-Palestine conflict is no longer just an Israel-Arab war, but now this war is turning into a war of civilizations and religions.
This tragedy in the Middle East is the result of the collective political and moral failure of the international community to resolve the Palestinian issue, and the Israeli and Palestinian people are paying the price.
High Commissioner for Foreign Relations of the European Union said that for several decades, the international community has been emphasizing the two-state solution to the Palestinian issue, but has not given a reliable road map for this solution, as a result of which both sides have rejected this solution. The forces of action became powerful.
Israel’s construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and violence against the Palestinian population continued unabated and became brutal after October 7.
He said that on the other hand, the moderate forces in Palestine were also weakened, even that Hamas carried out an action against Israel on October 7, which cannot be justified, but this action did not solve the Ibrahim Accords and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Political phase should be started with the involvement of Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Arab countries, the European Union, Turkey, America and Norway, which played an important role in this matter in the past, and the shape of this phase should be determined, he maintained.
This is the last chance for a two-state solution for Palestine. If we do not succeed now, this war of violence and hate will continue for generations, he concluded.
Tahreer Azzam, a nurse at Makassed Hospital in east Jerusalem, has been caring for young, desperately-ill Palestinian patients for 16 years.
But amid Israel’s relentless bombardment in Gaza since Oct 7, she now struggles to find them.
Usually, around 100 patients from Gaza receive care each day for complex health needs such as treatment for rare cancers and open heart surgery, at hospitals like Azzams, as well as in the occupied West Bank, Israel and other countries, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).
That came to a halt after Oct 7, when Hamas broke through the Gaza border fence, killing nearly 1,400 people inside Israel and taking some 240 hostages.
In response, Israel imposed a complete siege on Gaza, bombarding the coastal enclave and launching a ground offensive.
More than 10,000 Palestinians, including over 4,000 children, have been killed, according to health officials in Gaza.
Azzam and her colleagues have been trying to reach their patients ever since, including checking Facebook to see whether they are still alive.
“We saw a post announcing that one of our child patients had been killed in the strikes. He had been at the department only a week before. He was six years old,” she told Reuters in an interview.
The WHO is pushing for the most vulnerable among the chronically ill to be allowed out for treatment. Other countries have offered to take in patients, including Egypt, Turkiye and the United Arab Emirates.
Before the war, around 20,000 patients per year sought permits from Israel to leave the Gaza Strip for healthcare, many of them requiring repeat trips across the border.
A Palestinian woman helps a school girl walk at the X-ray unit in Shifa hospital in Gaza City. — Reuters
Almost a third are children. Israel approved around 63 per cent of these medical exit applications in 2022, according to the WHO.
Gaza’s own healthcare facilities have been stretched under a 16-year Israeli-led blockade and repeated rounds of fighting.
In previous wars, the crossing would close for a day or two, but then the patients were able to return. This is the first time there is such a comprehensive ban on movement and Gaza patients cant make it out, said Osama Qadoumi, the supervisor at Makassed Hospital.
“The longer we wait, the worse some patients will get. Many people will die merely because they have no access to treatment,” Qadoumi added.
