Baerbock advocates faster aid deliveries into Gaza

Tel Aviv (dpa) – Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock wants to boost faltering aid efforts in view of the plight of the Palestinian civilian population in the Gaza Strip. “Given the suffering in Gaza, we can no longer afford to discuss where exactly the bottleneck is and who is to blame,” said the Minister in the coastal city of Tel Aviv after a visit to the Israeli Gaza border crossing Kerem Shalom.  

She said she had been told by both the Egyptian and Israeli side “that the bottleneck is mainly the trans-shipment between lorries, with reloading and inspection being carried out three times in some cases,” said Baerbock: “We need to find a way to avoid having to reload the lorries three times”. She said she would support the large-scale expansion of a Jordanian concept involving small numbers of lorries driving directly into Gaza and no longer having to reload at the border.  

Unfortunately, said Baerbock, much of the food aid that Germany had financed through the World Food Programme was now in Jordan, for example. “We must now do everything we can to ensure that the food there finally gets to the people who need it,” said Baerbock. Aid for the World Food Programme had been increased by a further 10 million euros, she said. The Federal Foreign Office and the German Development Ministry also previously announced that Germany was providing 45 million euros to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in support of its regional work in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the West Bank.