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People pray over the shrouded bodies of loved ones killed during Israeli bombardment on January 13, 2024, at the yard of Al-Najjar hospital in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.
The European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell says the continent has been kept in the dark over the scale of the tragedy in Gaza as many journalists have either died or not been able to access the territory because of incessant Israeli attacks.
"The absolutely tragic situation experienced by the civilian population in Gaza is unfortunately not always sufficiently known in Europe, not least because Western journalists do not have access to the enclave and many Palestinian journalists have lost their lives," said Borrell in an opinion piece published on EU’s website on Saturday.
In the article, the EU diplomat urged members of the bloc to unite and push for a solution to the conflict in Gaza, where the Israeli regime has killed nearly 24,000 people since it launched an aggression on the enclave in early October.
He said that lack of consensus among EU members about how to react to the conflict in Gaza has weakened the bloc’s position in the region, preventing it from having influence on events.
The EU foreign policy noted that, "Gaza people are in desperate need of food, water, medicine and healthcare. Beyond bombs and bullets, famine and epidemics are beginning to threaten the lives of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians."
Borrell said that some 1.9 million people, or nearly 85% of the population of Gaza, are now forcibly displaced because of the destruction left by Israeli army’s incessant military attacks in the enclave.
The diplomat said, however, that the EU will firmly oppose any forced displacement of the Gaza population outside of the enclave as proposed by some members of the Israeli government "when they talk about getting rid of the Palestinians of Gaza".
Borrell also warned EU members that lack of a united effort to end the conflict in Palestine may cause it to spread to already volatile regions in Yemen and Lebanon.
