MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Evacuation of Brazilians from Gaza Strip through Egypt greenlighted

Brazil would continue to promote dialog, Vieira said

Brazilians wishing to leave the Gaza Strip will be allowed to do so Saturday through the Rafah crossing after Egypt greenlighted the move, Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira confirmed Friday, according to Agencia Brasil.

“[The Brazilian citizens] will leave on this bus, which will transport them tomorrow [Saturday]. What we proposed is that they leave and be taken to an airport, a location very close to the border, where a Brazilian Air Force plane will be waiting,” Vieira said in New York at a press conference after chairing a fruitless meeting of the United Nations Security Council to address the Middle East crisis.

The Brazilian government hired buses to transport the Brazilians to the Egyptian border and was awaiting clearance, Agencia Brasil also said.

“The [Security] Council has a crucial responsibility, both in the immediate response to the events of the humanitarian crisis of the moment, as well as in the future stages, by intensifying the multilateral relations necessary to restore a peace process. Neither Israelis nor Palestinians should go through similar suffering again,” Vieira also pointed out after two and a half hours of talks.

He added that Brazil would continue to promote dialog. “The immediate objective is clear and urgent: to prevent further bloodshed and loss of life and to try to guarantee urgent humanitarian access to the worst-hit areas,” he stressed.

Vieira also condemned the violence of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas and called for the creation of a humanitarian corridor to allow the evacuation of the civilian population. “In the end, following a request from members of the Security Council, Brazil will continue to work continuously with all delegations with a view to a unified council position on the situation,” he said while pledging Brazil, who currently chairs the Security Council, will strive to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe.

“We have received, with absolute astonishment, the news that Israeli forces have ordered more than 1 million civilians to leave the northern part of Gaza in 24 hours. As the United Nations has already made clear, this would lead to an unprecedented humanitarian crisis for civilians,” he also noted.

Before meeting with Vieira, UN Secretary-General António Guterres expressed his solidarity with the families of the workers who have died in the Gaza Strip and other conflict zones. Since the start of the Hamas offensive on Oct. 7, eleven United Nations staff and 23 humanitarian workers have died in Gaza. On Friday (13), a Reuters cameraman died in southern Lebanon.

Since the creation of the UN Security Council after the Second World War, the body has only managed to pass four resolutions. The first came during the Korean War in the 1950s. After a paralysis during the rest of the Cold War, the council passed three more resolutions: on the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq in 1991; on the invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11 in 2001; and on the military intervention in Libya in 2011.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, via social media, referred to the attack against a rave music festival in southern Israel as [a] “terrorist” [act] but did not extend that adjective to Hamas, in line with Brazil's government stance on the issue.

The Itamaraty Palace issued a statement Thursday informing it would follow UN Security Council (UNSC) guidelines in this regard. “The Security Council maintains lists of individuals and entities qualified as terrorists, against which sanctions are applied. These include the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda, as well as groups less known to the general public,” the document from Brazil's Foreign Ministry read.

“In application of the principles of international relations set out in Article 4 of the Constitution, Brazil repudiates terrorism in all its forms and manifestations,” it went on.

Despite the UN definition, countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and Japan, as well as the European Union, classify Hamas as a terrorist organization, while Norway, Switzerland, China, Russia, and many Latin American nations do not as a way to protect their citizens in conflict areas.

“Brazilian practice, consistent with the UN Charter, enables the country to contribute, together with other countries or individually, to the peaceful resolution of conflicts and the protection of Brazilian citizens in conflict zones - as happened in 2007 at the Annapolis Conference, USA, in relation to the Middle East,” says the Itamaraty note, to reinforce Brazil's current position.

Hamas means Islamic Resistance Movement in Arabic. It is a Palestinian movement made up of a philanthropic entity, a political arm, and an armed arm. It was created in 1987 in the context of the First Intifada, one of the Palestinian uprisings against Israel's occupation.

In 2006, Hamas defeated Fatah in the legislative elections for the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), winning the right to form the new government. The two parties, however, came into conflict. Hamas expelled Fatah from the Gaza Strip. In response, Fatah rejected the unity government and remained at the head of the PNA, which now has a political administration focused on areas of the West Bank.