Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Andrzej Szejna and Foreign Ministry spokesperson Pawel Wronski speak during a press conference, as Israel's ambassador to Poland Yacov Livne is called to Polish Foreign Ministry after comments he made about the death of a Polish aid worker Damian Sobol, who was killed by the Israeli army in Gaza, in Warsaw, on April 5.Maciek Jazwiecki/Agencja Wyborcz/Reuters
Poland’s government on Friday called the killing of a Polish aid worker by Israeli air strikes in Gaza a murder, and demanded Israel’s support for a Polish investigation into the case.
Deputy Foreign Minister Wadysaw Teofil Bartoszewski told lawmakers in parliament that the April 1 death of Damian Sobol, 35, and six other workers of the World Central Kitchen charity who were distributing food in Gaza was “shocking and disturbing.”
Poland expects Israel’s “full cooperation” in the investigation opened by Polish prosecutors in Sobol’s hometown of Przemyl in Poland’s southeast, Bartoszewski said. The prosecutors “have classified it as a murder,” he said.
Israel conducted a speedy investigation and took responsibility for the deaths, but said the attack that killed the aid workers and their Palestinian driver was a tragic mistake. It shared the findings with the countries that lost citizens in the attack. The Israeli military dismissed two officers and reprimanded three others, saying they violated the army’s rules of engagement.
Bartoszewski said that the dismissals and disciplinary measures were “inadequate,” and demanded that the case be tried by an independent court in Israel.
During a debate in the Polish parliament, many lawmakers said the killings should be considered a war crime.
Bartoszewski said Poland was working with other countries whose citizens were killed in the shelling – Australia, Britain, Canada and the United States – to jointly press for a detailed investigation into how cars marked as humanitarian convoy could have become targets of repeated shelling by the Israeli army.
He stressed that all international rules of defence were violated by that attack.
Bartoszewski also said that Poland is demanding compensation for the family of Sobol, whose body has been brought back to Poland.