Polish PM: Israel testing Polish solidarity with the war on Hamas

Poland’s solidarity with Israel has been tested by the IDF attack on World Central Kitchen aid workers, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said in a post on X Wednesday morning.

A Polish citizen was one of the seven killed in a strike, which Israel has taken responsibility for and is investigating.

Tusk, in his statement, said, “The vast majority of Poles showed full solidarity with Israel after the Hamas attack,” Today, you are putting this solidarity to a hard test. The tragic attack on volunteers and your reaction arouse understandable anger,” he stressed.

Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski expressed his frustration over the incident in a phone call with Foreign Minister Israel Katz on Tuesday.

He said that Poland plans to conduct its own investigation into the disaster, even as it expected Israel to conduct an independent and transparent one, according to a diplomatic source.

Sikorski told Katz that the humanitarian situation in Gaza was a very controversial one, the source said.

Poland-Israel diplomatic talks

Poland understands the importance of combating terrorists, Sikorski said, according to the source, but that in this case, the war on Hamas should also be accompanied by a diplomatic process with the Palestinian people.

Katz invited Sikorski to visit Israel to talk about these issues, including the normalization process with Saudi Arabia, which he hoped would move forward. He expressed his condolences for Poland’s loss and thanked it for standing with Israel since the Hamas attack on October 7.

Katz told Sikorski that Israel was still expecting Poland to act on its pledge to return its ambassador to Poland, made almost two years when the two countries resolved a diplomatic crisis around Warsaw’s positions regarding the history of the Holocaust as it pertains to Poland.

Sikorski told Katz that Poland was working on it, the source said.

Later on Wednesday, Kan News reported that Israel's Ambassador to Poland, Yacov Livne, had been summoned for a reprimand.

Spanish PM says Israeli explanation of aid workers attack is 'insufficient and unacceptable'

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said explanations provided by Israel about the killing of seven people working for the aid charity World Central Kitchen in a Gaza airstrike were insufficient and unacceptable, demanding further details.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the incident "a tragic event in which our forces unintentionally harmed non-combatants," adding that "this happens in war."

"That is unacceptable and insufficient, and we are awaiting a much stronger and more detailed clarification, after which we'll see what action to take," Sanchez told a news briefing on Wednesday while visiting Qatar. World Central Kitchen was founded by Spanish American chef Jose Andres.