Norway on Friday condemned Israel’s “unacceptable” siege of Gaza after the Hamas militant group’s bloody attack on Israel.
“Israel is entitled to defend itself … but it cannot use all possible means,” Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt told public radio NRK.
“I condemn this siege because you have to, when they ask so many people to leave, when they don’t have access to food and medicine,” she added.
On Saturday October 7, Hamas gunmen killed more than 1,200 people in Israel and took about 150 hostages in the deadliest attack since the country’s creation in 1948.
Israel has retaliated by raining air and artillery strikes in Gaza, which have claimed more than 1,400 lives and displaced over 400,000 people in the crowded enclave.
After Hamas’s attack, Israel ordered a total siege of the Gaza Strip, cutting off food, water and electricity supplies to the area already subjected to a land, air and sea blockade since 2006.
On Friday, Israel’s army called for all Gaza City residents — around 1.1 million people — to evacuate their homes and head south of the territory within 24 hours.
“The establishment of a full blockade, including on access to electricity, water, food, and other goods that are indispensable for the survival of the civilian population in Gaza, is unacceptable,” Huitfeldt said in a statement late Thursday.
The Scandinavian country has condemned the Hamas attack.
Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store broke with the country’s tradition of following the UN’s list of terrorist organisations — which does not include Hamas — when he called the movement a “terrorist organisation”.
“An organisation that planned, carried out and claimed responsibility for such terrorist acts must be considered a terrorist organisation. Period,” he told parliament.
