2024-04-04 20:38 update: 2024-04-05, 13:41
Photo PAP/Paweł Supernak
Poland has summoned Israeli Ambassador Yakov Livne following Monday's Israeli airstrike on a humanitarian convoy in Gaza that resulted in the tragic death of a Polish aid worker.
Damian Sobol was among seven volunteers from the World Central Kitchen food charity who died in the attack.
On Thursday, Andrzej Szejna, a Polish deputy foreign minister, announced that Livne had been summoned to the foreign ministry for 10am on Friday.
Polish foreign ministry spokesman Pawel Wronski told PAP that during the meeting Szejna would deliver a diplomatic note to the Israeli ambassador but that he could not reveal its contents as it was still being prepared.
Poland's Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, in a phone conversation on Tuesday with his Israeli counterpart, Israel Katz, said he was outraged and shocked, and called for an impartial inquiry.
In an interview posted on the Youtube channel Kanal Zero on Wednesday, Ambassador Livne said what had happened was a tragic accident and the kind of error that happens in a conflict environment at night.
He also expressed sorrow over the death of the volunteers but avoided apologising.
"It was not a war crime. What happened is a tragedy. I think there is a difference between a crime and an accident. We must make it absolutely clear: the Israeli defence forces do not target humanitarian organisations," Livne said.
He added that the Israeli authorities will thoroughly investigate the causes of the tragedy and will then inform the authorities of Poland and other countries whose citizens died in the shelling of the convoy.
Commenting on Livne's statements Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Thursday that he could not accept the way Israel's ambassador had spoken about the military strike on the aid convoy in Gaza that killed seven people and said he should have offered a "human apology".
During the interview Livne was also asked about the statement made by Katz in 2019, that Poles "suckle anti-Semitism with their mother's milk."
He replied that anti-Semitic phenomena are visible in Poland and as an example he pointed to anti-Semitic inscriptions on the walls of tenement houses in the central city of Lodz which he visited a few months before.
Polish President Andrzej Duda said on Thursday that Livne was the Israel's "biggest problem" in its relations with Poland due his statements which he described as "outrageous." (PAP)
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