Strasbourg 08.10.2024 The EU top diplomat Josep Borrell participated in pleanary debate with the Members of the European parliament regarding the situation in the Middle East:
“I anticipate that I will be speaking [in this debate] not only as Vice-President of the [European] Commission, but also as the High Representative in charge of foreign policy – ​​which I think you should have also invited to this debate, because it is fundamentally a foreign policy issue.

“The Speaker of Parliament has already said it before – two days before the attack on 7 October I was in Kyiv, near the – infamous – Babi Yar ravine, attending a religious service in the small synagogue, which is there, above the ravine, where some 35,000 Jews killed by the Nazis during the Second World War are buried.

“Two days later I woke up to the announcement from my crisis cell that the kibbutzim on the Gaza border were being attacked, in what has undoubtedly been the greatest tragedy for the State of Israel and for the Jewish people since the Holocaust – which had one of its cruelest expressions in that ravine in Kyiv.

“I have always thought that anti-Semitism is the most perverse invention of human beings – to claim that someone deserves to die because they belong to a certain ethnic group. This hatred [is] anchored in history, towards a people who have suffered so much. It seems to me one of the worst perversions that humans have been capable of. Therefore, the Jewish people deserve so much reparation.

“I am not going to repeat what the president said, because you want me to talk about what happened in the last year. Not only what happened on October 7 – which we know very well and we have condemned and condemn it a thousand times – but what happened afterwards, until today.

“From the point of view of the people of Israel, I will take the words of former Defense Minister Mr. [Benny] Gantz, who says in an article that there were not only 1,200 [dead and] 250 [hostages]; not only [are] 100 still in captivity. Immediately after that [came] the Hezbollah attacks in Lebanon, in northern Israel, which forced 70,000 Israelis to leave their homes, [leaving] 47 dead. And then, the Iranian attacks – first on April 13 and then on October 1, which sent seven million Israelis out of their homes and into bomb shelters.

“This is what happened, from the point of view of Israel. We have condemned these terrorist attacks from the beginning. We have stood by the families of the hostages. I myself have met with them four times, three times in Tel Aviv and recently in New York. Certainly, the release of the hostages is an unconditional condition, if you will pardon the redundancy, which must take place, we have said from the beginning, without any conditionality and immediately.

“It is also true that from this tragic experience we can deduce that the people of Israel cannot look to their future if they are not sure that October 7 will not happen again, never again.

“As I say, from the beginning we have condemned these attacks. We have also condemned the whole wave of anti-Semitism that has taken place. We must not trivialize the word “anti-Semitic.” Because in the same way that it must be completely repudiated, because no Jew has to suffer the consequences of the decisions of the Government of Israel, this word cannot be applied to those who criticize or criticize the decisions of this Government.

“A government that has every right to defend its people, but the right to self-defense, which any government has in the face of an attack, also has its limits. Unfortunately today, when we talk about what has happened since October 7, we cannot help but see the other tragedies and horrors that have occurred. Unfortunately, today the prospect of a ceasefire seems to be disappearing. Probably because the ‘day after’, which we have talked so much about, is not the day of peace, but the ‘day of expansion’ throughout the region of a war that affects Lebanon – but which we will talk about tomorrow in another debate that you have called for.

“In a war there are no good or bad victims, there are simply civilian victims. Civilian victims, whether they are Israeli or Palestinian. And all victims are equal. Just as we mourn over the fate of those who were brutally murdered on October 7, we also have to consider what has happened, what is happening in Gaza, where more than 40,000 Palestinians have died from bombs or from disease or from the dramatic circumstances in which the population lives, and another 97,000 [Palestinians have been] wounded, according to the latest figures from the Gaza Ministry of Health on October 6. As I say, there are no good or bad victims, there are only civilian victims, innocent victims, who are collateral victims of the war.”

“…That is why it is so important to point out the importance of what UNRWA [United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East] is doing. By the way, the Israeli Parliament has recently voted in favour of declaring it a terrorist organisation and withdrawing any form of participation in aiding the Palestinian people living in Gaza or the West Bank.

The European Parliament will also have to debate this issue and what aid they think we should give to UNRWA from the community budget.

Finally, I think that a great effort must be made to dialogue between the civil societies of Israel and Palestine.

I know that this may seem ridiculous, strange, at a time when resentment and hatred dominate all other feelings. It may seem illusory to think that, after so much confrontation, so much pain and so much hatred, one can try to build bridges between these two peoples.

We have tried, we have called three meetings between the two sides and on October 27 we will do it again in Barcelona, ​​on the margins of the Union for the Mediterranean.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) informs the situation in Gaza makes it impossible for people “to access care or remain safe and healthy”.

The WHO announced in a post on X that lack of food, water, hygiene, safety and medicines has made it hard especially for those with special needs.

WHO added that 24,090 of the injured in the war in Gaza have life-changing injuries, with 180 women giving birth every day.

According to the statement, even before the current hostilities in Gaza caused by Hamas 7 October terrorist attack, there were 650,000 people with hypertension, 1,500 people with kidney disease, 485,000 people with mental health disorders and 2,000 cancer patients without access to oncology services in the