Premium
Prime minister Marcel Ciolacu said that, according to the latest data, there are still 350 Romanians in the Gaza Strip and about 250 have already asked the crisis cell activated at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to be repatriated to Romania.
Asked if there was a reasonable prospect of evacuating them, given the situation in the Gaza Strip, the prime minister replied that "there is an international team working on it".
"Of course there is... I got involved and it was one of the items on the agenda today. I even thanked Mr. prime minister [Netanyahu - ed.n] You can imagine that he feels an internal pressure of revenge at the moment, as a politician, but he has demonstrated, 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 him. He also showed us some terrible and hard to describe images of what happened a few days ago," said Ciolacu.
In the same context, prime minister Ciolacu was asked if there were any hostages of Romanian origin or with Romanian citizenship.
"There is no such information. Instead, I had a meeting with two families, who had a sister and a child who are of Romanian origin, having grandparents from Romania. Both families had hostages at this time and they even showed me videos sent by the terrorists, with hostages. It is very emotional and I think it was our duty to show this solidarity with Israel. Even Mr. prime minister said that he considers us brothers. He said to me: 'Brother Marcel'. So it is clear that there is a great emotion and a joy that we are the first state to have a declaration in Parliament in support of Israel," said Ciolacu.
On the other hand, the head of government confirmed that the authorities in Bucharest are also in contact with the Egyptian authorities, given that the repatriation of Romanian citizens from the Gaza Strip is expected to take place at the border crossing point into Egypt.
"I think you know the answer as well as I do and that of course there is communication with Egypt. But you also know the whole context. There are more than 2,000 citizens with dual citizenship, not only Romanians, in the Gaza Strip, at the moment, in a way, gathered at the border, in the south, and there is also a desire to bring humanitarian convoys into the Gaza Strip. The important thing is that the Israeli army has not intervened on the ground in the Gaza Strip and has not escalated 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 that country and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
