The first Air Force plane carrying Brazilian citizens fleeing Israel arrived in Brasília on Wednesday, but the government is still seeking ways to extract citizens from the Gaza Strip, with talks to set up a safe humanitarian corridor across the border with Egypt.
According to Brazil’s Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira, a request for collaboration from the Egyptian government has been well received by UN Secretary-General António Guterres.
Mr. Vieira says he has met with his Egyptian counterpart, Sameh Shoukry, to ask the North African country to take in a bus of Brazilian refugees who are currently in the Gaza Strip.
There are a reported 28 Brazilian citizens in the Gaza Strip who have requested help from the authorities to leave Palestine. Their proposed route of repatriation would be to cross the border into Egypt at Rafah, the main point of exit from Gaza, and then board a plane to Brazil in Cairo.
Egypt, in turn, fears a massive influx of refugees into its northeastern Sinai Peninsula, and has closed the Gaza crossing, instead urging Israel to allow refugees to leave Palestine through its borders.
On Wednesday, Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva issued an appeal to the international community and mentioned Mr. Guterres by name, asking for help to save children caught up in the Israel-Palestine conflict.
“Hamas must release the Israeli children kidnapped from their families. Israel must cease bombings so that Palestinian children and their mothers may leave the Gaza Strip over the border with Egypt. There needs to be a minimum level of humanity in the insanity of war,” wrote Lula, on social media.
On Saturday, however, Lula’s first statement on the conflict decried “acts of terrorism” without naming Hamas.
Despite maintaining a policy of relative distance from the Israel-Palestine conflict over its diplomatic history, Brazil is now in the spotlight during the current conflict due to its role as the rotational president of the UN Security Council throughout the month of October.
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