The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has rejected Israeli plans to push civilians into safe zones in the south of Gaza and said the world must pursue a humanitarian ceasefire as the only way to save lives in the territory. He was opening a hastily assembled humanitarian conference in Paris attended by politicians, NGOs and leaders of the UN humanitarian movement.
Macron described the proposal for safe zones in the south of Gaza as a very bad idea that would not guarantee safety because no political agreement existed for them.
The conference did, however, hear support for a maritime humanitarian corridor from Cyprus to Southern Gaza.
Macron was hoping to draw together some of the disparate individual national initiatives to help the people of Gaza, as well as to amplify the call for a humanitarian ceasefire that the UN security council has been unable to support because of political divisions in New York. Proposals for humanitarian aid drops, maritime corridors into the south of Gaza from Cyprus and field hospitals inside Gaza have been proliferating.
Israel rejected Macron’s invitation to the Paris conference, but the Palestinian prime minister, Mohammad Shtayyeh, attended. Shtayyeh asked whether killing six children an hour was a sufficient bloodbath, saying: “this war was not against Hamas, but against all Palestinian people”, and urging the international community not to endorse the Israeli plan to force the people of Gaza to the south. Macron said he would speak to Israeli officials at the end of the conference.
Martin Griffiths, the head of the UN humanitarian agency OCHA, said the escalation of the war was already under way. He said: “War, indeed, is a virus that always wants to expand. The current conflict is a wildfire that would consume the region, that could spread, and that we will think these have been the good days when we see what may happen tomorrow.”
He also said proposals for safe zones in Gaza were unacceptable, had not been discussed with the UN and, based on history, would not work. He said the amount of aid reaching Gaza through the Rafah crossing was “a crumb”, and that the current 100 trucks a day needed to increase fivefold and become a permanent and reliable supply.
Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, said she backed the call by the Cypriot president, Nikos Christodoulides, for a one-way maritime humanitarian corridor.
Christodoulides said the corridor, based at the port of Larnaca, 230 miles (370km) from Gaza, could store 200,000 tonnes of aid to ship to the south-west coast of the territory accompanied by frigates, with the unloading area declared a UN-designated controlled area. He said his plan “for a sustainable and reliable route was gaining traction and political endorsement”.
The Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, said his country was willing to provide naval assets for the corridor as long as the proposal was safe and a landing zone had the necessary infrastructure.
Von der Leyen was silent on the calls made by UN representatives at the conference for Israel to open its closed crossing at Erez.
Jan Egeland, the head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said: “We need the ceasefire. We need to agree that a short-lived pause is not enough. Just like some relief to a corner of Gaza, for some people is not enough.”
