BRUSSELS/WASHINGTON — The European Union on Tuesday agreed to review its cooperation deal with Israel over alleged human rights abuses in Gaza, the bloc’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas said.
Kallas said Brussels was acting after “a strong majority” of its 27 member states backed the move, in a meeting of EU foreign ministers, in a bid to pressure Israel.
“What it tells is that the countries see that the situation in Gaza is untenable, and what we want is to really help the people, and what we want is to unblock the humanitarian aid so that it will reach the people,” Kallas told journalists.
The United States has reached out to countries about accepting “voluntary” relocations of Palestinians fleeing Israel’s offensive in Gaza, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday.
Israel has again warned the population of Gaza — nearly entirely displaced since the war broke out over the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas — to move ahead of a new offensive, which comes after it has blockaded food and supplies for more than two months.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly mused about displacing Gaza’s two million people to make way for reconstruction.
Responding to a question in testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Rubio said: “There’s no deportation.”
“What we have talked to some nations about is, if someone voluntarily and willingly says, I want to go somewhere else for some period of time because I’m sick, because my children need to go to school, or what have you, are there countries in the region willing to accept them for some period of time?” Rubio said.
“Those will be voluntary decisions by individuals,” he said.
Democratic Senator Jeff Merkely replied, if “there is no clean water, there is no food, and bombing is all around you, is that really a voluntary decision?”
Rubio did not say which countries had been approached but denied that Libya was among them.
NBC News, quoting anonymous sources, recently reported that Trump’s administration is working on a plan to relocate permanently up to one million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Libya.
