After an agonizing month-long wait, surrounded by explosions, without water and energy, among other basic needs, almost all Brazilian citizens awaiting repatriation to Brazil were allowed to leave the Gaza Strip this Friday. Of the 34 Brazilians and their family members on the list provided by Brazilian diplomats, 33 were allowed to leave the war zone between Israel and Hamas, but this Friday Brazil is still trying to include on the list the only person who did not have permission, the grandmother of an 18-year-old girl , whose departure from Gaza was not authorized.
Brazilian diplomatic officials say the woman’s exclusion may have been a simple unintentional mistake by authorities compiling lists of foreigners allowed to leave the Gaza Strip. For this reason, Brazilian diplomats in Brasilia, Egypt, Palestine and Israel concentrated all their efforts this Friday on trying to include in the permit the only person not allowed to leave, the grandmother of 18-year-old young Shahid Al-Banna, who during the period when she was trapped in Gaza, Brazilian television channels were sending dramatic and emotional reports of her odyssey.
The permission for the Brazilians to leave came after intense negotiations between the Brazilian government and the authorities of all parties involved, which in recent days have severely strained relations between Brazil and Israel. Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen assured his Brazilian counterpart Mauro Vieira several times that Brazilians would be on the list of those allowed to leave the Gaza Strip, but that permission was then denied day after day. Cats and Rats, which Brazilian diplomats said on condition of anonymity was a response to Brasilia’s criticism of the killings of civilians by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip following brutal attacks carried out in Israeli cities by Hamas extremists on October 7.
In Brasilia, a parallel event further deepened the deterioration of relations with Israel when last Wednesday the Israeli Ambassador to Brasilia, Daniel Zonshin, proposed a meeting with Brazilian MPs and senators opposed to President Lula da Silva to show shocking photographs of Hamas’s first steps. attacks carried out primarily against civilians. Alongside the diplomat as a special guest was former President Jair Bolsonaro, but he currently holds no office and is leading a hostile opposition to the current government in what was seen as an act equally hostile to Brazil that could lead to Zonshin’s ouster , but the Brasilia government chose not to take any action so as not to cause further harm to the Brazilians trapped in the Gaza Strip.
Brazilians stranded in Gaza since the start of the war in early October are concentrated in two towns in the south of the enclave, Khan Younes and Rafah, and will cross the border into Egypt in buses leased by the Brazilian government and to be identified. with large Brazilian flags to avoid bombing. Once on the Egyptian side of the border, they will be examined by Egyptian medical teams and doctors sent by Brazil, and then board a Brazilian Air Force FAB plane that has been waiting at the airport in the capital Cairo for three years. weeks.
In addition to these Brazilians and their families, Brazil, along with several other FAB aircraft, rescued more than 1,500 Brazilians from the conflict region who had requested repatriation. Of those, 1,416, including tourists and locals, were in Israel and the rest in the West Bank, Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory where there is no official war but where protests against Israeli occupation forces have been brutally suppressed and have already claimed 165 lives.
Author: Domingos Grilo Serrinha This correspondent in Brazil
Source: CM Jornal
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