Israel will present the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross with a confidential report compiled by the medical teams that treated all the hostages who were released from Hamas captivity in the Gaza Strip.
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ICRC President Mirjana Spoljaric is scheduled to arrive Thursday for a visit to Israel, 10 days after she visited the Gaza Strip. Spoljaric will meet with President Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Foreign Minister Eli Cohen and Health Minister Uriel Bosso. In addition, Spoljaric will meet with families of hostages and will tour Kibbutz Kfar Aza on the southern border, accompanied by Cohen.
Bosso will present Spoljaric with a confidential report drawn up by the medical teams that treated all the hostages that have been released from Hamas captivity in Gaza about what they went through medically while captivity, including the lack of food, medicine and medical treatments.
President of the International Committee of the Red Cross Mirjana Spoljaric speaks after a visit to Gaza
At the meeting, they reportedly will make it clear to the ICRC president that every day that passes without allowing the medical access to the hostages, and to receive information about their conditions, puts their lives in danger.
Last week, Spoljaric made a quick visit to Egypt and Gaza, partly to try to gain access to the hostages and to deliver medicine to them, efforts which have so far been unsuccessful. The visit took place following her meeting in Doha, Qatar with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. Later, Spoljaric is expected to pay a two-day visit to Israel, amid sharp criticism in Jerusalem of the Red Cross's performance in the war.
During her visit to Gaza, she released a two-minute video, in which she mentioned in one short sentence the hostages who are being held in the Strip and called to "protect their rights," and in the same sentence referred to protecting the rights of the "detainees" - meaning Palestinians being held in prisons in Israel. "All those deprived of liberty must be treated humanely," she said.
In the rest of the video, Spoljaric spoke about the condition of the hospitals in Gaza, about the wounded and amputees, and the suffering of the civilian population in the Gaza Strip.
"I was told today that the north (of Gaza) has lost its entire surgical capacity," she said, adding in a message directed at the international community: " We can't turn away from what is evidently a moral failure in the face of the international community. I'm calling on parties and everyone who has an influence to de-escalate and to find other than military solutions to what is an immense suffering of the people on both sides." She concluded by calling for a "political solution" to the Gaza war.