The evacuation of the nearby 120 Spaniards who are in the Gaza Strip are facing enormous difficulties. As you have been able to know THE WORLDIn the last two days, several attempts have been made to allow these people to leave the area, but they have not been successful. Meanwhile, the Government of Spain maintains contacts with other countries and international organizations to attempt joint extraction when possible, but the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Avoid giving details about it. Official sources only confirm that there are contacts both with affected Spaniards and with different authorities to try to proceed with their escape. Today it was learned that the US will evacuate its citizens from Israel on Monday by ship to Cyprus
Evacuations of nationals abroad in emergency situations are always very complex. And when they are in zones of military conflict, much more. But in this case the situation is complicated by the nature of the crisis, with thorny diplomatic factors involved, and by the geographical characteristics of the area: Gaza is a territory of 365 square kilometersovercrowded and literally sandwiched between Israel, to the east, and the Mediterranean Sea, to the west.
The bombings in Gaza are constant. Added to this is a total blockade by Israel, which does not allow the entry of goods, food, water, electricity or fuel, while there are interruptions to telephone and internet service.
If the Gaza Strip is already a blockaded area, the Israeli military forces are currently keeping the Palestinian territory under siege. One of the theoretically most viable exit options is in the south, in the Rafah pass towards Egypt. However, the situation at that point is uncertain. The information that arrives is changing at times and confusing depending on the sources of the different actors involved in the conflict.
Egypt has denounced in recent days that the vicinity of the crossing has been bombed by Israel, which has caused interruptions in the operations of the border crossing, although Cairo stated yesterday that it maintains that the crossing remains open to “traffic”, without giving more. details. In turn, Egyptian television sources Al Qahera News -close to the Intelligence of this country- cited by the Efe agency indicated that the Egyptian authorities have decided to reject the entry into their country of foreigners residing in Gaza if humanitarian aid is not allowed to enter the Palestinian enclave.