Israel faced growing calls for longer pauses in the Gaza war, if not a ceasefire, as well as increased aid to the enclave, as European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell was expected to make his first visit to Israel Thursday since the start of the Gaza war.
“The EU has called for immediate humanitarian pauses,” he said in a post he wrote on X prior to his arrival. He told reporters earlier this week that the European Union wants to play a larger role in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The United Nations Security Council was due to meet late Wednesday to debate a resolution calling for humanitarian pauses to the Gaza war
In the United States public support for the Gaza war is eroding and most Americans think Israel should call a ceasefire to a conflict that has ballooned into a humanitarian crisis, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll.
Some 32% of respondents in the two-day opinion poll, which closed on Tuesday, said “the US should support Israel” when asked what role the United States should take in the fighting. That was down from 41% who said the US should back Israel in a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted October 12-13.
Erdogan calls Israel a 'terror state'
The share saying “the US should be a neutral mediator” rose to 39% in the new poll from 27% a month earlier. Four percent of respondents in the poll said the US should support Palestinians and 15% said the US shouldn’t be involved at all, both similar readings to a month ago.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday Israel was a “terror state” committing war crimes and violating international law in Gaza, sharpening his repeated criticism of Israeli leaders and their backers in the West.
Speaking two days before a planned visit to Germany to meet Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Erdogan said Israel’s military campaign to oust Hamas from Gaza included “the most treacherous attacks in human history” with “unlimited” support from the West.
He called for Israeli leaders to be tried for war crimes at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, and repeated his view – and Turkey’s position – that Hamas is not a terrorist organization but a political party that won past elections. He said this even though Hamas forcibly took over Gaza in a bloody coup in 2007, in which it banished the Palestinian Authority’s Fatah party to the West Bank.
Britain, the United States, the European Union, and some Arab states deem Hamas a terrorist group, unlike Turkey. Ankara hosts some members of Hamas.
“With the savagery of bombing the civilians it forced out of their homes while they are relocating, it is literally employing state terrorism,” Erdogan said of Israel in a speech he delivered to his parliament. “I am now saying, with my heart at ease, that Israel is a terror state.
“We will never shy away from voicing the truth that Hamas members protecting their lands, honor, and lives in the face of occupation policies are resistance fighters, just because some people are uncomfortable with it,” he said.
Later on Wednesday, Erdogan spoke to Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni and told her that Ankara expected Rome’s support in achieving a ceasefire in Gaza, the Turkish presidency said. Meloni’s office said she had called for rapid de-escalation in Gaza, adding Turkey had a crucial role in preventing the spread of the conflict.
Erdogan also called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to announce whether or not Israel had nuclear weapons, adding that Netanyahu would soon be a “goner” from his post.
He also likened the conflict between Israel, a Jewish state, and the Palestinians to a war between the Christian and Muslim worlds, saying the crisis was “a matter of cross and crescent”.
Ankara would also take steps to ensure Israeli settlers in occupied Palestinian territories are recognized as “terrorists,” he added.
Netanyahu says Erdogan is supporting terrorists
Netanyahu shot back that “there are forces that support the terrorists. And one of them is President Erdogan of Turkey, who calls Israel a terrorist state but actually supports the terror state of Hamas, and has himself bombed Turkish villages inside Turkey itself. So, we’re not going to get any lectures from them.
“We stand with those who stand for justice and truth,” he said.
Israel has insisted that it will push forward with its military campaign in Gaza until it has ousted Hamas from the enclave. It has allowed for targeted limited pauses, mostly to allow Palestinians living in northern Gaza to flee to safety in the southern part of the Strip.
It has also closed its two crossings into Gaza, including Kerem Shalom which is the main commercial entry and exit point for goods to that enclave. It has allowed for an ad hoc system for the delivery of basic humanitarian goods through the Rafah Crossing on the Egyptian border.
The over 100 trucks a day that now enter the Strip are deemed insufficient to supply it with goods and the Rafah crossing is not designed for such traffic.
Israel launched its military campaign in response to Hamas’s October 7 invasion of southern Israel, in which it massacred over 1,200 people, including infants and the elderly, and seized over 239 hostages.
Hamas has asserted that over 11,000 Palestinians have been killed in war-related violence in Gaza since October 7. Photos of wounded babies and reports of entire families that have been killed have sparked global protests in support of Palestinians. That uproar has only increased as Israel entered hospitals in the Strip to destroy Hamas terror infrastructure that the terrorist organization built in those medical facilities in violation of international law.
British, Irish ministers call for accelerated flow of aid into Gaza
British and Irish ministers called for accelerated flows of aid into the Gaza Strip during separate visits to the Egyptian capital Cairo on Wednesday.
Limited deliveries of humanitarian relief have been crossing from Egypt into Gaza since October 21, though aid workers say the amount brought into the enclave is a fraction of what is needed.
“We need to speed that up. We need to try and make sure that we’re able to have a much better flow of vital provisions through there so that it could get to the people very much in need,” said Andrew Mitchell, Britain’s minister of state for development and Africa, adding that fuel is a current priority.
Israel had refused the delivery of fuel to Gaza, saying it could be used by the enclave’s ruling Hamas group, but allowed an initial delivery for UN aid distribution trucks on Wednesday. No fuel has been allowed in for hospitals or water provision, which have been badly affected by fuel shortages.
“Without question, we need a dramatic increase in aid at scale to meet the dire humanitarian situation on the ground in Gaza, where a human catastrophe is unfolding in front of our eyes,” Irish Foreign Minister Micheal Martin told reporters.
The main challenge, Mitchell said, was the creation of “safe areas” without grouping vulnerable people together and putting them at risk.
Britain has offered 51 tonnes worth of supplies for Gaza, in addition to other heavy lifting equipment, Mitchell said. It has urged humanitarian pauses in Israel’s bombardment of Gaza but has not called for a full ceasefire, saying Israel has a right to protect itself.
Ireland has taken a more extreme stance, with Martin calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.
He also called for all hostages held by Hamas to be released, adding that the government was working on the case of 8-year-old Irish citizen Emily Hand.
“Hostages should be prioritized and we are very focused on the case of Emily Hand,” said Martin.
WHO head condemns Israel for hospital battle as US, Israel say it's Hamas HQ
The head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, told reporters the Israeli incursion into Al Shifa Hospital was “totally unacceptable.”
“Hospitals are not battlegrounds,” he said in Geneva.
“What is happening in Gaza is a very obvious, very clear war crime that Israel is committing against those who have been treated in the hospitals,” said Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh, who serves in the Palestinian Authority that exercises limited self-rule in the West Bank.
Israel has consistently maintained that the hospital sits above a Hamas headquarters, an assertion the United States said on Tuesday was supported by its own intelligence.
UN aid chief Martin Griffiths, also speaking in Geneva, implored Israel on Wednesday to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza via the Kerem Shalom crossing in Israel. Aid is currently being allowed into Gaza via the Rafah crossing from Egypt, but that crossing was designed for pedestrians, not trucks.