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00:00 - Ian McGuinn with that report. Let's get more analysis and bring in Tommaso Dallalongo,
00:03 who's on the International Red Cross and Red Crescent. Tommaso, thank you much for being
00:07 with us here on France24. Give us your reading of the situation as it is right now in Gaza.
00:12 - Thanks a lot for having me this evening. The situation, I would say, that is beyond
00:17 desperate and I would use the story of what happened to our colleagues of Palestine
00:23 Red Crescent a few days ago. On Friday, our colleague Edaya Mad, she was the head of youth
00:31 and volunteers of Palestine Red Crescent. She was doing, as usual, at work, supporting displaced
00:38 people inside the hospital and our premises, helping wounded, and she was killed. And this is
00:44 I mean, the 14th time since the beginning of the conflict that our people ends in the line of fire
00:52 and are killed in the line of duty, both in Palestine and in Israel. And I think that this
00:58 is a stark reminder of where the level of violence of this conflict has arrived, where not even
01:03 humanitarian workers are respected. And so the situation in the Gaza Strip, going back to your
01:08 question, is beyond desperate because it's difficult to find health support, food, water,
01:14 but it's also difficult to bring humanitarian aid inside the Gaza Strip and give a dignified
01:20 answer to the people in Gaza. Thomas, I'm just going to repeat for people watching a little bit
01:24 of what you just said there, your colleagues, humanitarian workers, trying to help people
01:29 being killed in the line of trying to do that. It is shocking what is going on. Do you have any sense
01:36 that there is a truce coming? We've got Anthony Blinken coming back to the region, we've got
01:40 Stéphane Ségurné from France meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu. Do you have any sense there's any
01:45 change coming? First of all, let me reiterate the shock and how much it is unacceptable that
01:51 humanitarian workers are not respected by the parties of this conflict. And again, to reiterate
01:56 the call to protect and respect the humanitarian workers, hospital and ambulances. Then,
02:01 again, going back to your question, as a humanitarian, I need to be optimistic. So I
02:07 do believe, I do hope that any diplomatic effort could be successful. But the reality here, this
02:16 question should be posed to the people in Gaza, to the relatives of the hostages, to the hostages
02:21 themselves. They don't have any more time. People, the people that we are seeing now in what you are
02:26 broadcasting at the moment, need a humanitarian dignified answer. They need medicine, they need
02:32 safety, and they need this fighting to stop, as well as hostages, they need to be released
02:38 unconditionally and immediately. So this is why we are calling the international community to give
02:43 an answer and action to the people in the Gaza Strip. The people at the start of the conflict,
02:49 October 7th, 8th, then onwards, were told to move south in order to be safe. Today,
02:54 it seems there's nowhere where your people can help people and be safe.
03:01 Sadly, you know, sometimes I don't have any more words to speak about the situation in the Gaza
03:08 Strip. In the last three months, more than three months, we said many times there is no safety in
03:14 the Gaza Strip, from north to south. At the beginning, we could have argued that north was
03:19 more dangerous than the south. And now we see what is happening in Canunis, but also in the
03:23 Arafat governorate. So again, I think that the call for protection and respect for civilians,
03:31 wherever they are, in every condition, it's really critical. And again, it's not a moral
03:37 obligation, it's a legal obligation under international humanitarian law.
03:40 Tomas Adela Longa of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent,
03:44 thank you, sir, for joining us. And from a neutral perspective, let's hope that your people,
03:49 trying to help people, can at least be safe. Thank you, sir, for joining us and sharing your analysis.
03:54 Thank you very much.