Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said Wednesday the humanitarian situation in Gaza was “ever more dramatic and unjustifiable”, stressing she had repeatedly urged Israel to find a way to end the conflict.
“It is a request that I renew today in the face of a humanitarian situation in Gaza that I have no difficulty in defining as increasingly dramatic and unjustifiable,” Meloni told parliament.
Meloni’s comments came a day after French President Emmanuel Macron called “shameful” the behaviour of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in blocking humanitarian aid to Gaza.
In questions from parliament, she was pressed by an MP to condemn Netanyahu’s actions, and asked whether she would introduce sanctions against Israel or recall its ambassador.
Meloni said her conversations in recent months with Netanyahu were “often difficult conversations in which I always referred to the urgency of finding a way to end the hostilities, the need to respect international law, international humanitarian law”.
She added: “We did not agree with several choices, we do not agree with the recent proposals of the Israeli government and we have not failed to say so to our interlocutors.”
She noted, however, “that it was not Israel that started the hostilities and that there was a design, as I have said several times, behind the inhuman attacks by Hamas and the cruelty directed against the hostages.”
On Tuesday, Macron said that “what the government of Benjamin Netanyahu is doing is unacceptable… There is no water, no medicine, the wounded cannot get out, the doctors cannot get in. What he is doing is shameful”.
His criticism led Netanyahu on Wednesday to accuse him of siding with “a murderous Islamist terrorist organisation” and echoing “its despicable propaganda”.
“Macron is once again demanding that Israel surrender and reward terrorism,” Netanyahu said in a statement.