About 300 Ukrainians have expressed the desire to be evacuated from Palestine if Israel conducts ground operations in the Gaza Strip, while 44 have already been removed from the Gaza conflict zone, Ukraine's Foreign Ministry has reported.
“About one thousand Ukrainians live in Gaza, according to law enforcement agencies of the Palestinian Authority. I stress: these are their data,” the director of the Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry information policy department, Oleh Voloshyn, said at a briefing in Kyiv on Tuesday.
According to him, most of the Ukrainian citizens are women – the wives of Palestinians – and their children.
Voloshyn added that on Nov. 17-19 some 44 Ukrainian citizens were evacuated from the Gaza Strip through a checkpoint on the border with Egypt. The diplomat stressed that the Egyptian authorities gave full support to the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry in this matter.
He also said that Palestinian people treat the situation with understanding and do not associate Ukrainians with an unacceptable political position.
Voloshyn said that they had received several complaints about Hamas members preventing Ukrainians from leaving the Gaza Strip.
He added that the ministry is working on an alternative plan of evacuation of Ukrainians across a checkpoint on the Israeli-Palestinian border, and their further transportation to Jordan and departure to Ukraine.
Voloshyn also noted that unlike citizens of European countries, Ukrainians are not eager to return to Ukraine, and the same situation was registered during the evacuation of Ukrainians from Libya, Syria, and other conflict territories.
The diplomat said that the Foreign Ministry has good experience in evacuation of its citizens from foreign countries.
“The Foreign Ministry’s actions are almost automatic, each diplomat knows what to do in similar situations,” he said.
