Tommaso Della Longa, Spokesperson and Manager of the Media Unit at International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies spoke to CGTN Europe about the humanitarian crisis in the Middle East a year after October 7th attack.
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00:00Thomas De La Longue is from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
00:06Thanks for coming on the program.
00:08Now, as you've been hearing, it's one year since those horrific attacks that led to the major escalation of armed hostilities in Israel.
00:15Who needs help most urgently and what are the challenges to getting aid to where it's needed most?
00:22First of all, thanks for having me today.
00:24Well, aid is badly needed all across the Gaza Strip.
00:30We're talking about millions of people that are internally displaced, many times who are lacking the basics.
00:38I mean, we're talking about lack of food, lack of water, lack of health support.
00:42I would say, and today it's very important to reiterate that the conflict needs to stop.
00:48We need to create safety for the people, but also safety for the humanitarian operation.
00:54We need to have hostages back home.
00:57And we need to have an extended operation, a humanitarian operation, all across Gaza Strip.
01:03This is the only way forward.
01:05And, you know, you were talking about challenges, and it's a very correct question.
01:08And I would say that the biggest challenge here is that people, the international community, need to understand that there is no humanitarian solution if there is no political solution.
01:17So now more than ever, after a year of suffering, after the horrific attack of the 7th of October, after a year of conflict, the international community must do their utmost to stop all of this.
01:30Now, the Red Cross and Red Crescent say that aid workers and civilians must be respected and protected, that hostages must come home.
01:39So what contact have you, as a humanitarian organization, had with the hostages who are still held in Gaza?
01:47Well, of course, all the different negotiations have been done among parties and different stakeholders.
01:56In the Red Cross and Red Crescent family, the colleagues of the International Committee of the Red Cross are the ones who have a clear mandate to deal with this kind of situation, together with, and of course, on the situation of the hostages.
02:11Now, as I'm not part of that organization, I cannot enter in details, but what I can tell you is that they didn't spare any effort to reach the hostages.
02:20And if this was not possible until now, it's because, again, there is a lack of political solution, negotiation and will.
02:30So you talk about that lack of political solution, lack of will. What needs to happen next?
02:39Well, what needs to happen is that, you know, for many years, I would say decades, we took for granted the several basic, if you want, but very important international rules.
02:49And these rules were saying that civilians must be protected, that humanitarians must be protected, and that the priority of the international community is to make the condition for peace.
03:00Now, we see, we saw a huge deterioration of all these laws, and we need to stop this cycle.
03:06And we just need to have international community diplomats sparing no effort to have the parties around the table and to stop the suffering.
03:14This is what we have been saying for a year, and sadly, we are continuously saying the same.
03:19Tomasso Della Longa, thank you very much.
03:23Thank you.