Strike on Gaza aid group putting Poland-Israel ties ‘to the test’ — Tusk

Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk says that a deadly Israeli strike on aid workers in Gaza that killed a Polish citizen, and the government’s reaction to the incident, are straining ties between the two countries.

Directly addressing Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s envoy to Warsaw, Tusk posts on X: “The vast majority of Poles showed full solidarity with Israel after the Hamas attack. Today you are putting this solidarity to a really difficult test.”

“The tragic attack against volunteers and your reaction are generating an understandable anger,” he wrote.

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski warns the incident is likely to increase antisemitism in Poland, and calls for Israel to “apologize and pay compensation to the families of the victims.”

“If it is true that the convoy was deliberately attacked because it was supposed to contain a terrorist, and that civilian lives were therefore sacrificed, I do not know of any [political] system in which this would be justified,” he tells Polish public radio Trojka.

“It is obvious something is wrong with the rules on the use of weapons by the Israeli army,” he says. “You cannot play down this matter by saying these things happen in war, as Netanyahu said yesterday.”