WARSAW: Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk warned on Wednesday that a deadly Israeli attack on aid workers in Gaza that killed a Polish national, and the government’s reaction to the incident, were straining relations between the two nations.
Directly addressing Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s envoy to Warsaw, Tusk said on X that today you are putting this solidarity to the test. The tragic strike against volunteers and your reaction are generating an understandable anger.
The attack killed 7 aid workers in Gaza, including British, Palestinian, Polish, Australian, and US-Canadian staff, after the employees had just unloaded humanitarian food assistance in the war-hit territory, AFP reported.
Israel Defence Chief Terms Attack a Grave Mistake
Israel’s defence chief said on Wednesday that the attack was a “grave mistake”.
Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski warned the incident was likely to increase anti-Semitism in Poland, and urged Israel to apologize and pay compensation to the victims’ families.
Radoslaw Sikorski said that if it is true that the convoy was deliberately attacked because it was supposed to contain a terrorist, and that civilian lives were therefore sacrificed, he did not know of any political system in which this would be justified.
He said that it was obvious something was wrong with the rules on the use of weapons by the Israeli forces.
The strike was widely condemned, with US President Joe Biden stating Israel has not done enough to protect aid workers, and United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres calling the attack “unconscionable”.
