The President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, was received this Tuesday March 5 in Ankara by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. A meeting devoted primarily to efforts to accelerate the delivery of humanitarian aid to the inhabitants of Gaza, while Turkey is looking for a way to send aid to the Palestinian enclave without going through Israel.
2 mins
With our correspondent in Istanbul, Anne Andlauer
While famine threatens Gazans and Israel continues to drastically limit the entry of humanitarian aid into the besieged Palestinian enclave, Turkey is pleading for a mechanism that would do without Israeli authorizations.
In recent days, the head of Turkish diplomacy, Hakan Fidan, assured that several countries – his own and others he did not name – were ready to act “ unilaterally » to deliver aid without coordinating with authorities in Tel Aviv.
Following his meeting with Mahmoud Abbas, Turkish President Erdogan did not directly discuss these efforts. But he reiterated in clear terms his country’s support for the Palestinians in the face of what he described as “ obvious genocide “.
“ Two million three hundred thousand Palestinians are deprived of access to basic needs. Israel not only savagely massacres the people of Gaza through hunger and thirst, it also does so by dropping bombs on innocent people. For 150 days, we have witnessed one of the greatest barbarities of the century “, he explained.
A unilateral aid mechanism for the Palestinians would require the green light from Egypt, which controls the Rafah border crossing, the only land crossing for humanitarian aid entering Gaza. Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Cairo last month for the first time in more than a decade.
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