By Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Dozens of Western nations called on Monday for the reopening of the medical corridor between Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, offering to provide financial aid and medical staff or equipment to treat Gaza's patients in the West Bank.
"We strongly appeal to Israel to restore the medical corridor to the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, so medical evacuations from Gaza can be resumed and patients can get the treatment that they so urgently need on Palestinian territory," the countries said in a joint statement released by Canada.
Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the European Union and Poland were among the two dozen signatories of the statement. The United States was not listed as a signatory.
"We furthermore urge Israel to lift restrictions on deliveries of medicine and medical equipment to Gaza," the statement said.
There was no immediate reaction from Israel. In the past, Israel has rebuffed calls to allow Gazans to receive medical care in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, most recently during a meeting this month between Foreign Minister Gideon Saar and his Danish counterpart, when Saar cited "security concerns".
Israel has allowed some Gazans to be evacuated to Arab and European countries for treatment. Palestinians say this is no substitute for wider access to hospitals in other Palestinian territories.
Aid agencies said in late August that only a trickle of the aid that was needed, including medicine, had been reaching people in Gaza since Israel lifted a blockade on aid in May. The World Health Organization said in May that Gaza's health system is at a breaking point. Israel controls all access to Gaza and says it allows enough food aid and supplies into the enclave.
Images of starving Palestinians, including children, have sparked global outrage against Israel's assault on Gaza, which has since October 2023 killed tens of thousands of people, internally displaced nearly Gaza's entire population, and set off a starvation crisis. Multiple rights experts, scholars and a U.N. inquiry say it amounts to genocide.
Israel calls its actions self-defense after an October 2023 attack by Palestinian Hamas militants that killed 1,200 people and in which more than 250 were taken hostage.
Some key U.S. allies, most notably Britain and France, have rallied behind Palestinian statehood at the United Nations as a path to a two-state solution, despite Washington's disapproval.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington, additional reporting by Alexander Cornwell in Tel Aviv; Editing by Jamie Freed, Michael Perry, Peter Graff)
