Angelina Jolie is a Hollywood actress, and she is also an activist who supports Palestinians trapped in Gaza, and on Friday she visited aid workers at the Rafah Crossing.
Jolie met with Red Crescent volunteers and aid truck drivers on Friday to assess conditions for injured Palestinians and the current state of aid at the border during the ongoing blockade by Israel. The Hollywood star’s visit was to highlight the urgent challenges at the border and to find out how much aid is actually getting through to Gaza.
The actor and film producer spoke to members of the Red Crescent and the truck drivers attempting to deliver humanitarian aid across the border from Egypt. Jolie was accompanied by a delegation from the US and was greeted by former and current officials at the Rafah Crossing, and said she was “honored” to meet the aid volunteers.
However, a Red Crescent volunteer told Jolie “there are thousands of aid trucks just waiting” at the border crossing. At the same time, Israel has said it will “enforce” a ban on 37 NGOs in Gaza as the crisis deepens.
According to the Jerusalem Post, local media reported that the actor and former special envoy for the UN refugee agency visited to assess the condition of injured Palestinians transferred to Egypt. She also wanted to investigate aid deliveries into the devastated territory. However, as yet, Jolie and the Egyptian authorities have not officially commented on the visit.
The Rafah border crossing in Egypt was planned to be reopened under an alleged “ceasefire” supposedly in effect in Gaza since October, but so far has remained closed. On Friday, a joint statement from Egypt and six other countries including Saudi Arabia “urged the international community to pressure Israel, as the occupying power, to immediately lift the constraints on the entry and distribution of essential supplies” to Gaza.
Israel announced in early December that the Rafah crossing would open again, but only for those Palestinians wishing to leave Gaza. However, this prompted Cairo to quickly deny that it had approved such a move.
Meanwhile, Angelina Jolie is among Hollywood’s most iconic figures, and at the end of 2022, stepped down from her role as special envoy for the United National refugee agency, after over 20 years of service, saying she wanted to concentrate on broader humanitarian issues.
In a post to her Instagram account, Angelina Jolie wrote, “We have rights as a consequence of being human, not because of who we are or where we happen to live,” adding, “It is shattering to see that so many innocent lives – and principles so many of us stand by and believe in – are being disregarded in this way.”
“This is the continuation of decades of selective defense of human rights – not the sudden loss of a moral center. It is the consequence of treating some lives as important and others as disposable. It is the culmination of the shameless way UN Security Council countries pick and choose which countries to criticize or ignore, and which to help and defend, while the numbers of people forcibly displaced by violence has more than doubled in a decade globally – Sudanese, Syrians, Afghans, Ukrainians and Palestinians among them,” the actress and activist wrote.
