Palestine rejects Israeli calls for temporary refugee camps in southern Gaza

By Qais Abu Samra

RAMALLAH, Palestine (AA) – Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh on Monday rejected Israeli calls for setting up temporary refugee camps for displaced Palestinians in the southern Gaza Strip.

''We want our people to return to their homes from which they were forcibly displaced,” Shtayyeh said during a cabinet meeting in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

The prime minister said the Palestinian authorities are seeking to ensure the delivery of food and medicine to the blockaded Gaza Strip.

“We are doing everything possible to save our people in Gaza,” he said.

Shtayyeh urged the United Nations and European Union to airlift humanitarian aid to the besieged enclave, particularly the northern Gaza Strip.

“We also demand the UN and EU open other corridors for aid delivery into Gaza and not limit them to the Rafah crossing” with Egypt, he added.

More than 11,100 Palestinians have been killed, including more than 8,000 children and women, in Israeli air and ground attacks on the Gaza Strip since last month, the government media office in Gaza said on Sunday.

The Israeli death toll is nearly 1,200, according to official figures.

*Writing by Ziad Aslan in Ankara