'6 Israeli crossings with Gaza must be opened,’ says Egypt's foreign minister

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry on Saturday stressed the need to open Israeli crossings with the besieged Gaza Strip, Anadolu Agency reports.

“We demand that the six Israeli crossings with Gaza be opened to humanitarian aid,” said Shoukry in a joint news conference with his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan in Istanbul.

The Egyptian official stressed that the “failure to do so violates international law.”

Shoukry said that “since the beginning of the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip, Israeli hurdles persisted.”

He noted that Egypt has “engaged international allies in setting up Gaza center for aid distribution.”

The Egyptian minister also said: “We must prevent the displacement of Palestinians and work to establish an independent Palestinian state.”

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Iran-Israel tension

About the Iran-Israel tension, Shoukry said: “The latest tension got the international community to divert from the tragic situation in Gaza and the Palestinian issue in general.”

“There is a possibility that this war, this conflict, this tension will spread,” he added.

Tensions escalated after Tehran launched a drone and missile attack on Israel last week in response to the April 1 attack on its consulate in Syria, in which several military advisers were killed.

The Egyptian minister also stressed: “We must deal with these problems in a way that would exempt the Palestinian innocent civilians from Israeli destructive actions.”

Flouting the International Court of Justice’s provisional ruling, Israel continues its onslaught on the Gaza Strip where at least 34,049 Palestinians have been killed, mostly women and children, and 76,901 injured since Oct. 7, according to Palestinian health authorities.

The Israeli war has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine, while 60% of the enclave’s infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

Hostilities have continued unabated, however, and aid deliveries remain woefully insufficient to address the humanitarian catastrophe.

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