EU aid deliveries

Cyprus President announces sea corridor for Gaza

(Bild: APA/AFP/Kenzo Tribouillard)

Cyprus' President Nikos Christodoulidis has announced the resumption of EU aid deliveries to the Gaza Strip via the sea corridor. "The sea corridor can resume operations very soon," he told the newspapers of the Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland (RND). The USA was "close to completing the temporary port in Gaza".

Once this dock is operational, "it will be much easier to send two or even three ships and even larger ships with much more humanitarian aid to Gaza", said Christodoulidis. This is an important step to help the people of Gaza in the face of the terrible humanitarian catastrophe, he added.

Criticism of the EU's limited efforts
Christodoulidis criticized what he saw as the EU's insufficient efforts to bring peace to the region. "To be honest, I am not at all satisfied with our current commitment as a European Union," he said. "Although it is about our neighbors, we are not playing a leading role in the efforts for peace. We need to do much more and play a much more important role, both in de-escalating the crisis and in negotiating a two-state solution."

The EU is very focused on Ukraine, Christodoulidis continued. "But if we want to play a geopolitical leadership role, we need to be able to deal with two or three crises at the same time."

The EU and the US also announced a sea corridor from Cyprus at the beginning of March. The problem: there is no port in the Gaza Strip. The US military was therefore supposed to build a temporary port, but this was not expected to be ready until May.