Publication date: 18.10.2023 00:09
Marcel Ciolacu visited Israel, where he met with Benjamin Netanyahu. Photo: gov.ro
Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu declared on Tuesday evening that, according to current data, there are 350 Romanians in the Gaza Strip, of which about 250 have already requested the crisis cell activated at the level of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to be repatriated to Romania. He also said that it is Romania’s duty to stand in solidarity with Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu told him that “he considers us brothers”.
Marcel Ciolacu returned on Tuesday from Israel, where he held talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Asked if there is a reasonable prospect of evacuating the Romanians from the Gaza Strip, the prime minister replied that “there is an international team working on this”.
“It’s normal… I also got involved and it was one of the items on today’s agenda. I even thanked the Prime Minister (Netanyahu – no). You realize that he has an internal pressure of revenge at this moment, as a politician, but he has shown, once again, experience and maturity, and the path of dialogue is still being tried. There are also almost 200 hostages, of all nationalities. I also had a private discussion with his lordship. He also presented us with some terrible and hard-to-describe images of what happened a few days ago”, Marcel Ciolacu declared on Tuesday evening at Romania TVaccording to Agerpres.
“It was our duty to have this solidarity with Israel”
In the same context, the prime minister was asked if there are any hostages of Romanian origin or with Romanian citizenship.
“There is no such information. Instead, I met with two families, who had a sister and a child who are of Romanian origin, with grandparents from Romania. Both families had hostages at this time and even showed me videos sent by the terrorists with hostages. It is a great emotion and I think it was our duty to have this solidarity with Israel. Even the prime minister said that he considers us brothers. He told me: “Brother Marcel” (“Brother Marcel” – trans.). So it is clear that there is a great emotion and joy of the fact that we are the first state to have a statement in the assembled Parliament in support of Israel”, Ciolacu also affirmed.
On the other hand, the head of the Government confirmed the fact that the authorities from Bucharest are also in touch with the Egyptian authorities, considering that the repatriation of Romanian citizens from the Gaza Strip is expected to take place at the border point to Egypt.
“I think you know the answer as well as I do and the fact that there is normal communication with Egypt. But you also know the whole context. There are over 2,000 citizens with dual citizenship, not only Romanians in the Gaza Strip, at this moment, in a way, merged towards the border, in the south, and there is also a desire to enter humanitarian convoys into the Gaza Strip. The important thing is that the Israeli army at this moment did not intervene on the ground in the Gaza Strip and did not escalate the conflict”, said Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu.
The Romanian Prime Minister is the first head of government to visit Israel since the outbreak of the current conflict between this country and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Publisher : BP
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2023-10-17 21:09:31
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