Foreign Minister Eli Cohen on Wednesday said he spoke to the President of the Red Cross and demanded that the organization visit the more than 200 hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza.
“I spoke today with the President of the Red Cross, Mirjana Spoljaric, and I placed an immediate demand on her to visit the hostages in Gaza and provide them with the necessary treatments,” Cohen wrote on X following the meeting.
“I told her that if the Red Cross fails to visit the hostages, held by the terrorist organization Hamas, it has no reason to exist,” he added.
“The Red Cross has to act decisively and with all levers of pressure in order to take care of the safety and health of the hostages, among them women, children and Holocaust survivors whom Hamas brutally kidnapped and is against every international norm,” said Cohen.
The Red Cross has yet to visit the hostages who have been held by Hamas since its October 7 attack on Israel.
The Jerusalem Institute of Justice, an Israeli human rights NGO, recently led a coalition of 50 organizations in urging the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to verify the status of the hostages.
An initial medical report on the condition of the hostages which was presented to the Red Cross in mid-October found that there is an immediate danger to life and unbearable suffering for some of the hostages and missing persons.
Israel’s Ambassador to the US, Michael Herzog, last week met with senior representatives from the Red Cross at its US offices in Washington, and called on the Red Cross “to act against the war crimes of Hamas” by ordering the return of all the hostages and demanding an immediate visit by the Red Cross to all the hostages.