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French FM calls for foreign media access to Gaza
France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot has urged Israel to allow foreign media into the besieged Palestinian territory of Gaza, as warnings of famine mount after 21 months of war.
“I ask that the free and independent press be allowed to access Gaza to show what is happening there and to bear witness,” he told France Inter radio in an interview.
Since the war began, Israel has only permitted a handful of foreign journalists to enter Gaza, mostly by being “embedded” with the Israeli army.
Meanwhile, Palestinian journalists who have been covering the conflict from Gaza for the past five months have done so under intense Israeli attacks that have cost many of them their lives.
It is a ‘moral duty’ to criticise Israel’s policies in Gaza, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem says
Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, has criticised Israel’s war on Gaza following a visit to the Strip.
“We have nothing against the Jewish world, and we absolutely don’t want to appear to be against Israeli society and Judaism. But we have a moral duty to express our criticism of this government’s policies in Gaza with absolute clarity and frankness,” Pizzaballa told Vatican News.
His visit came after an Israeli tank hit Gaza’s sole Catholic church, killing three people and injuring 10. Israeli authorities said it was a “mistake”.
The Patriarch said he was struck by the vast expanses of tents he saw in the enclave where “people live in extremely precarious conditions” and by the mutilated children in hospitals.
