• Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said the immediate priority was to get a cease-fire, deal with security issues while getting humanitarian aid and preventing displacement

CAIRO: The international community has an obligation to organize security in Gaza after the war and a reformed Palestinian Authority must play a crucial role in future, Germany’s foreign minister said on Tuesday during a visit to Egypt.

“Egypt and Germany are agreed that Gaza and the West Bank belong to Palestinians,” Germany’s Annalena Baerbock told reporters.

Pressure is mounting on Israel from the United States and Middle East powers to ease its assault on the Hamas-run enclave of Gaza.

While Germany is traditionally one of Israel’s strongest allies, a legacy of the Holocaust in which Nazi Germany was responsible for killing some 6 million Jews, Berlin has called for an easing of the suffering of Palestinian people in Gaza.

Baerbock said Palestinians should not be driven away.

“We need to have concrete measures today and now. We need to make sure aid is getting to people in Gaza,” she said at a news conference with her Egyptian counterpart.

Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said the immediate priority was to get a cease-fire, deal with security issues while getting humanitarian aid and preventing displacement.

“All the steps that are being taken (by Israel) are for the purpose of pushing toward displacement,” said Shoukry, adding 2 million Palestinians could not remained trapped.

“We are under the illusion that there are efforts being made to prevent displacement, but we have not seen real efforts to prevent displacement,” he aid.

Baerbock, who was in Israel on Monday and travels on to Lebanon later, said Hamas needed to lay down its arms.

Israeli officials have said they are entering a new phase of more targeted warfare in Gaza after mass bombardments that have devastated the Gaza Strip and killed more than 23,000 Palestinians according to health officials there.

Israel’s assault was in response to attacks on Oct. 7 by Palestinian Hamas militants that Israel says killed 1,200 people. 

Reuters