{"id":418745,"date":"2025-02-13T19:10:51","date_gmt":"2025-02-13T18:10:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2025\/02\/13\/visita-metsola-israele-palestina\/"},"modified":"2025-02-13T19:38:08","modified_gmt":"2025-02-13T18:38:08","slug":"metsola-visits-israel-and-the-occupied-palestinian-territories-including-gaza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2025\/02\/13\/metsola-visits-israel-and-the-occupied-palestinian-territories-including-gaza\/","title":{"rendered":"Metsola visits Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, including Gaza"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brussels – EU Parliament President Roberta Metsola<\/strong> is on an official visit to Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories<\/strong>, where she is holding talks with leading local political authorities<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Roberta Metsola<\/strong>, President of the European Parliament, began her trip to the\u00a0hottest area in the Middle East<\/strong>\u00a0today (Feb. 13) and will continue until tomorrow. Upon arriving, she said, “At this critical time for the region and the world, I wanted to come here to\u00a0emphasize and witness firsthand Europe’s crucial role in getting humanitarian aid to Gaza.<\/strong>\u00a0“<\/span><\/p>\n

European partners are ready “to intensify our commitment<\/strong> and do everything we can to make the ceasefire and hostage release agreement hold<\/strong>,” she added, although\u00a0the pact’s future is more fragile than ever<\/a> these hours. The EU, she says, is also committed to increasing the volume of humanitarian aid<\/strong> to the Palestinian people after 15 months of devastation in one of the bloodiest wars in recent world history<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"Roberta<\/a>
EU Parliament President Roberta Metsola meets with Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana, Feb. 13, 2025 (photo: Daina Le Lardic\/European Parliament)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Early this afternoon, Metsola met with her counterpart Amir Ohan<\/strong>, chairman of the Knesset <\/strong>(Israel’s single-chamber parliament), and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar<\/strong>. After, she went to the Kerem Shalom<\/strong> border crossing (not far from the Egyptian border), where she witnessed the conduct of humanitarian assistance<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

From there, she\u00a0<\/span>entered the Strip<\/strong>, the land that, along with the West Bank, is part of what are now occupied territories but should, in the future, constitute the State of Palestine.<\/span>\u00a0Strip where U.S. President Donald Trump<\/strong> has recently suggested<\/a> conducting an ethnic cleansing operation<\/strong>\u00a0to build there later\u00a0the “Riviera of the Middle East<\/strong>.”<\/p>\n

Back in Israel, she was updated on the progress of the European civilian mission EUBAM<\/strong>, which operates at the Rafah Crossing<\/strong> along the border with Egypt. Another site Metsola visited was Re’im<\/strong>, which was hosting the festival Nova,<\/i><\/strong> raided by Hamas commandos during the attacks on October 7, 2023<\/strong>.\u00a0A face-to-face meeting with Jewish State President\u00a0Isaac Herzog<\/strong>\u00a0is scheduled in Jerusalem tonight<\/span>. No meeting is scheduled, however, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu<\/strong>, on whose head hangs,\u00a0since last November<\/a>, an\u00a0arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\n

Incredibly proud of the work our EUBAM Rafah station is doing in Gaza.<\/p>\n

Grateful for their service. pic.twitter.com\/Zj3zz522SC<\/a><\/p>\n

– Roberta Metsola (@EP_President) February 13, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Tomorrow, however, the chairwoman of the Europarliament will travel to Ramallah, where the\u00a0Palestinian National Authority (PNA)\u00a0<\/strong>is headquartered, to meet with its leadership. There, she will meet with\u00a0Hussein al-Sheikh<\/strong>, head of the executive committee of the\u00a0Organization for the Liberation of Palestine (PLO)<\/strong>, and\u00a0Reem Al Hajajra<\/strong>, director of\u00a0Women of the Sun<\/strong><\/em>, a Palestinian association working for\u00a0women’s emancipation<\/strong>\u00a0nominated for the 2024 editions of both the\u00a0Sacharov<\/a>\u00a0and Nobel Peace prizes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Metsola’s visit is part of the Strasbourg chamber’s ongoing efforts to\u00a0promote peace and regional stability<\/strong>\u00a0in the Middle East. These efforts include exchanges (physical or by telephone) with\u00a0leaders and officials from several Arab countries<\/strong>\u00a0(including Egypt and Jordan), the\u00a0United States<\/strong>, Israelis, and Palestinians.<\/span><\/p>\n

In a January 2024 resolution, the EU Parliament was the first EU institution to call for the release of all hostages<\/strong> from Israel, the dismantling of Hamas<\/strong> and the resumption of the peace process toward the building of two states<\/strong> between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, one Jewish and one Palestinian.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Speaker of Parliament meets with top leaders in Tel Aviv and Ramallah, but not Netanyahu<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7876,"featured_media":418742,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[25707],"tags":[25890,25794,30469,25759,25795],"class_list":["post-418745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-politics","tag-cease-fire-gaza-en","tag-roberta-metsolaat","tag-stripe-di-gaza-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7876"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418745"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418745\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":418749,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418745\/revisions\/418749"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/418742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}