Airlifts and maritime corridor from Cyprus. EU to increase aid to Gaza

Brussels – It could be a matter of days for the EU to open a maritime corridor for humanitarian aid to enter Gaza. A prospect that Cyprus has been thinking about since the beginning of the conflict between Israel and Hamas. The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, will be in Nicosia as early as tomorrow (March 7) and Friday and will visit the port of Larnaca, the designated port of call for operations that Brussels hopes will begin “as soon as possible.”

Against a backdrop of day-after-day overlapping reports and alarms about the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, where UNRWA said that assistance in February has halved compared to the previous month and the WHO reported that “at least ten children have died of starvation in the last few days,” the European Union has a moral obligation to speed up preparations and do all it can.

On the one hand, Brussels has already increased the budget to support the work of partners on the ground: the UNRWA, but also the Red Crescent and the Red Cross. Just today, the EU Commissioner for Crisis Management, Janez Lenarčič, on a visit to the West Bank, announced the disbursement of the first tranche of 50 million for the UN Palestinian Refugee Agency. But the other option is to reach the people of Gaza independently with basic necessities from member countries. Since October 7, the EU has carried out some 40 airlifts to Egypt that should reach Gaza via convoys from the Rafah crossing. But by land, aid does not get in or does so slowly because of fighting and obstacles to convoys imposed by Israel.

There is an increasing urgency to “expand the tools,” Balazs Ujvari, spokesman responsible for humanitarian aid issues for the European Commission, said today. On the one hand, discussions are being held on the maritime corridor, and on the other, air operations—as also already done by France, Jordan, and the United States. “We are studying this possibility very carefully,” Ujvari confirmed. This would be done through the European Civil Protection Mechanism. However, parachuting aid into the Strip “remains the last resort” because “it can only involve sending a limited amount of assistance.”

More viable at the moment is the Cypriot option, which will be unveiled in detail during von der Leyen’s visit. It would be a decisive break with Israel, which controls the sea access of any goods bound for Gaza. Whether it comes from the sea or the sky, in either case, the EU can count on Italy’s contribution. The Chamber of Deputies gave the green light to the ASPIDES missions in the Red Sea and Levant in the Middle East. The latter, as pointed out by Defense Minister Guido Crosetto, “opens the possibility of exploring” the provision of humanitarian aid from above, via parachute, in the Gaza Strip. It simultaneously commits the Meloni government to promote the international initiative for creating maritime corridors, in line with what Cyprus has put on the table.