The President of the ICRC, the International Committee of the Red Cross, Peter Maurer, who concluded a three day visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories, declared during press conference that his main concern upon departure pertains to a deteriorating situation in the Gaza Strip. Maurer said, “Let’s just for a minute imagine how life is with four hours of electricity, with waste water pump not functioning, with running water not functioning, and I think this is the reality at the present moment. No surprise, therefore, that we urged all parties involved in that situation, urgently to find and to sit to the table and find a solution which has not these important humanitarian consequences on people. I think it’s of critical importance that in order to prevent an implosion of the situation in Gaza, to act quickly and to find better solutions for people.”
Even though the International Committee of the Red Cross declares its work as impartial with a sole-focus of dealing with humanitarian challenged around the world, President Maurer took a political stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in which he declared that Israel’s settlement on lands the Palestinians demand for their future state is “a source of legal and humanitarian concerns.” He said, “The crisis of hope is primarily attached to, for Gazans to the situation in Gazans and for the people in the West Bank in particular to the issue of settlements. The settlement enterprise as we see it when talking to our victims and when analyzing the legal frame work under which we operate is a source of legal and humanitarian concerns,” Maurer declared.
During his three-day visit, Maurer met with Hamas Chief Yahya Sinwar in the Gaza Strip, with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank and with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem. During his meeting with Netanyahu, which lasted and hour longer than initially scheduled, the Israeli leader declared the ICRC President to be a friend of Israel, while pointing to cruelty by the Islamist Hamas organization, which controls the Gaza Strip, as it holds bodies of Israeli slain soldiers from past conflicts, as well as innocent Israeli civilians, and continues to reject any requests by the Red Cross to receive information on, what Netanyahu defined as, the “humanitarian matter.” While President Maurer said the International Committee of the Red Cross would continue its attempts in demanding information from the Islamist Hamas Organization, upon leaving Israel he said that, with regard to negotiations between Hamas and Israel on prisoner exchanges, the respective parties must negotiate as it was beyond his organization’s mandate.