Scotland is ready to provide asylum to refugees from the Gaza Strip and provide them with the necessary medical care amid the escalation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Scottish First Minister Hamza Yusuf said on Tuesday.
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“I call on the UK Government to take two urgent steps. Firstly, they must begin work immediately on creating a refugee resettlement scheme for those in Gaza who are willing and certainly able to leave. When they do this, Scotland is poised to become the first nation in Great Britain, providing safety and refuge to those affected by these terrible attacks,” he said during a speech at the congress of his Scottish National Party (SNP).
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At the same time, the First Minister called on the British government to organize the evacuation of wounded civilians from the Gaza Strip. Yusuf said Scotland was ready to “play its part” and make its hospitals available to provide medical care to the victims.
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The SPN leader also pointed out that there are currently about a million displaced people in the Gaza Strip, and called on the international community to commit to creating a global program to provide refuge to the region’s residents.
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The First Minister said his brother-in-law works as a doctor in the Gaza Strip and has seen serious shortages of medicines in hospitals, leaving doctors making difficult decisions about “who to treat and who to let die”.
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Earlier it was reported that the elderly father-in-law and mother-in-law of the First Minister of Scotland could not get out of the Gaza Strip, where they went to visit relatives. Yusuf himself stated that they were quickly running out of water and food and that he was unlikely to be able to see them ever again.
