The Israeli Ambassador to Ireland Dana Erlick has called on Hamas to allow Palestinian people to leave Gaza as Israel has been encouraging its citizens to evacuate danger zones.
Speaking on Newstalk Breakfast Ms Erlick said that Israel wanted everybody to be safe and to make sure the people of Gaza were provided for.
“We already said that we will bring back some of the water supply for southern Gaza. But I just want to remind you that Israel is not responsible for the level of the water in Gaza.
"There are capabilities within Gaza that Hamas, the so-called leadership, should have taken care of. All of what we're talking about, all of this up today is the fuel, the water, medicine. If only Hamas would have invested all of their money and efforts instead of hatred in Gaza, they would have capabilities of their own.”
The Ambassador said that the problem was that Hamas was not allowing their own population to leave southern Gaza. “We call on people to evacuate like we're doing with our population. We don't want our population to get hurt. So why isn’t Hamas letting its people go?”
When asked about discussions to allow unfettered access for people to cross the southern border into Egypt and for humanitarian aid to get in, Ms Erlick said that there were a lot of components involved and at the same time there were Israeli hostages in Gaza.
"Time and time again Hamas abused any aid going into the region to smuggle their own people in and out," she said.
“Right now, we are concerned about the situation, but there is not a crisis in Gaza yet. There will be if Hamas continues.”
When asked what was the goal of a ground offensive, Ms Erlick said it was to restore security to their borders. “To bring our families, our daughters, our children back. All of that, the Israeli people who are hostages in Gaza, we need to bring them back. But if you're asking me about the end game again, that's a question that should be addressed to Hamas.
“What we are doing is taking responsibility because every country has the right and obligation to defend its citizens. That is what we're doing. And we've seen time and time again that Hamas, in their charter it says the the annihilation of Israel. They mean it, they will do anything in their power to kill us and we’ve seen it last Saturday.
"The only conversation where we are focusing on is defense. We didn't start this. We didn't want this war. We didn't want for all of this to happen. We left Gaza in 2005 in the hope that we can live side by side. Unfortunately, all we got is rockets.”
Gaza could have been a prosperous place, she said. But money that could have been used for water, for medicine, for hospitals was instead being used on rockets, to nurture the hatred against Israel.
