French Foreign Minister Stéphane Cezournet criticized the Israeli authorities, which he considers responsible for obstructing the delivery of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip and “responsible” for “unjustifiable” situations, according to an interview he granted to the French newspaper Le Monde and published today.

“Responsibilities for the obstruction of aid are clearly Israeli,” Sejourne underlined, pointing out that the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza “creates indefensible and unjustifiable situations, for which the Israelis are responsible.”

France has stepped up its efforts to persuade the Israeli authorities to increase the number of humanitarian aid transit points and the number of trucks entering Gaza, however it has not succeeded and “famine adds to the horror”, the French minister complained.

Sejourneh’s remarks come after 115 Palestinians, according to Hamas, were killed on Thursday in the northern Gaza Strip when Israeli soldiers opened fire on a hungry crowd gathered to receive food aid and were trampled.

Cezourne, speaking yesterday to the France Inter radio station, had asked conducting an independent investigation into the incident.

Today he estimated that we are “at an impasse for Rafah,” the city in the southern Palestinian enclave home to nearly 1.5 million Palestinians, against which Israel has announced it will launch a ground offensive to defeat Hamas “in its last bastion”.

It will be “a new humanitarian disaster: we are doing everything to avoid it”, once again assured Cezournet, recalling that France has been asking for a truce for months that will last.

When asked how France and other countries could influence the conflict, the minister replied “everyone has their lever” for applying pressure, citing as an example the normalization of Israel-Saudi relations or US military support.

“We are not the ones who can impose an arms embargo!”, he underlined, assessing that “it is a set of elements that we must use in a coordinated manner at the diplomatic level”.