Donald Tusk calls out Benjamin Netanyahu after Israel kills aid workers
“The tragic attack on volunteers and your reaction arouse understandable anger,” Polish PM warned Israeli leader.
The killing of the seven workers from World Central Kitchen has sparked a huge backlash from world leaders. | Omar Marques/Getty Images
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Wednesday hit out at his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu, following a deadly Israeli bombing on seven aid workers in Gaza earlier this week.
The killing of the seven workers from World Central Kitchen has sparked a huge backlash from world leaders and inflamed concerns over the Israel Defense Forces’ war tactics.
“Prime Minister Netanyahu, Mr. Ambassador [Yacov] Livne, the vast majority of Poles showed full solidarity with Israel after the Hamas attack. Today you are putting this solidarity to a really hard test,” Tusk wrote on social media.
“The tragic attack on volunteers and your reaction arouse understandable anger,” Tusk added.
Also on Wednesday, Deputy Foreign Minister Andrzej Szejna summoned Israel’s ambassador for discussions.
“I want to talk to the ambassador about the new situation in Polish-Israeli relations and about the moral, political and financial responsibility for the event that recently took place in the Gaza Strip,” Szejna told the Polish press agency PAP.
Poland and Israel have been trying in recent years to restore frayed diplomatic relations, which had deteriorated after the previous, nationalist government in Warsaw brought in a law limiting Jews’ ability to recover World War II properties.
World Central Kitchen, a U.S.-based organization that said it had supplied 42 million meals over 175 days in Gaza, suspended its operations in the region following the Israeli strike. The dead aid workers included Australian, Polish and British citizens, according to the nonprofit organization.
On Tuesday, Netanyahu admitted that an “unintentional” Israeli airstrike killed “innocent people” in Gaza.
Israeli forces have been bombarding Hamas in Gaza for months, after Palestinian militants killed 1,200 people and took hundreds of others hostage in a deadly attack on Oct. 7 last year.
Source: Politico
