The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, announced, on Friday 8 March, the imminent opening of the maritime corridor to deliver humanitarian aid to the Gazan population from Cyprus.
“We are very close to the opening of this corridor, hopefully this Saturday or Sunday”, she explained during a visit to the Cypriot port of Larnaca. The Amalthea initiative - a mechanism for safely shipping aid from Cyprus to Gaza by sea - has been in preparation by the Cypriot authorities since October.
On Friday, Ms von der Leyen announced the launch of a pilot project with World Central Kitchen, an American NGO that provides meals.
In a joint statement published the same day, the European Commission, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, the Republic of Cyprus, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States announced their “intent to open a maritime corridor to deliver much-needed additional amounts of humanitarian assistance by sea”. They said they intended to use the corridor to “deliver significant additional aid by sea, working in coordination with UN Senior Humanitarian and Reconstruction Coordinator for Gaza Sigrid Kaag — who is charged with facilitating, coordinating, monitoring, and verifying the flow of aid into Gaza under UN Security Council Resolution 2720”. According to Ms von der Leyen, the United Arab Emirates secured the “first of many” shipments of goods to the people of northern Gaza. It takes around ten hours for a ship to reach Gaza from Larnaca, according to AFP.
According to the press release, Cyprus will soon be bringing together senior officials to discuss how to accelerate the maritime corridor, by completing the land and air routes, particularly from Egypt and Jordan. Speaking to the media, the President of Cyprus, Nikos Christodoulides, explained that the corridor would complement deliveries via the Rafah crossing and airdrops. “We are at a point where we simply have to unblock all possible routes”, he explained, adding that there was an urgent need to send humanitarian aid.
The participants in the operation acknowledged that delivering humanitarian aid directly to Gaza by sea would be “complex”. “Our nations will continue to assess and adjust our efforts to ensure we deliver aid as effectively as possible”, they promised. US President Joe Biden announced, on Thursday 7 March, that he had requested an emergency mission led by the US army to establish a temporary dock in Gaza.
These efforts, the participants added, will be closely coordinated with the Israeli government to increase deliveries by land, “insisting that it facilitate more routes and open additional crossings to get more aid to more people”. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)