GAZA (Palestine Foundation Information Center) Sweden will summon the Israeli ambassador to protest against Israel’s refusal to freely allow aid into Gaza, the country’s prime minister Ulf Kristersson said.
“We do not support what the Israeli government is currently doing by denying access to Gaza. Absolutely not,” he said, according to the Swedish news agency TT.
Kristersson told TT on Monday that the European Union should impose sanctions and exert diplomatic pressure on Israel to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza.
“We have been very clear about this, both nationally and with many other European countries. The pressure is now increasing — there is no doubt about it — and for very good reasons,” the prime minister said.
Kristersson also said he was in favor of a reassessment of the association agreement between the European Union and Israel.
“This requires a consensus, and we are not there yet. But many of us are working in that direction,” he said.
“The current actions of the Israeli government are pushing more EU countries to impose stricter demands on Israel,” he added.
After 18 months of relentless Israeli airstrikes, incursions and an increasingly restrictive siege in Gaza, the UN on May 20, 2025, issued one of its most urgent warnings yet about the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the war-ravaged Palestinian territory, saying “an estimated 14,000 babies were at risk of death without an immediate influx of substantial aid, especially food.”
A few days ago, Israel allowed, reluctantly and under pressure, the first trickle of aid back into Gaza following its nearly three-month total blockade imposed on the population on March 2. However on the first day of that resumption, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that only nine trucks were allowed into Gaza, when around 500 are required every day. The UN called it “a drop in the ocean of what is urgently needed.”
That aid delivery has been inconsistent and well below what is necessary for the population, culminating in a dire warning by UN experts that “the annihilation of the Palestinian population in Gaza” is possible without an immediate end to the Israeli war.
Since the collapse of the ceasefire in Gaza between 17 and 18 March 2025, the Israeli occupation army has escalated its attacks on civilians in Gaza, resulting in tens of thousands of them being killed and injured, further damage and destruction to civilian infrastructure, and new waves of forced displacement.
