Turkey’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has called on Muslim nations to unite against Israel’s plan to seize Gaza City, urging the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation to take urgent action. Egypt and Turkey jointly condemned the move, warning it would entrench illegal occupation and eliminate prospects for peace.
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Muslim nations must band together and organise worldwide opposition against Israel’s plan to seize control of Gaza City, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said on Saturday following discussions in Egypt.
On Friday, regional powers, Egypt and Turkey denounced the idea. Ankara claimed it represented a new era in what it dubbed Israel’s murderous and expansionist tactics, while also asking for worldwide action to prevent the plan’s execution.
Israel rejected this depiction of its operations in Gaza.
Fidan told a joint news conference in El Alamein with his Egyptian counterpart Badr Abdelatty, who had also met with Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, that the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation had been invited to an emergency meeting.
Fidan said Israel’s policy aimed to force Palestinians out of their lands through hunger and that it aimed to permanently invade Gaza, adding there was no justifiable excuse for nations to continue supporting Israel.
Israel denies having a policy of starvation in Gaza, and says Palestinian militant group Hamas, which killed 1,200 people in its October 2023 attack, could end the war by surrendering.
“What is happening today is a very dangerous development… not only for the Palestinian people or neighbouring countries,” Abdelatty said, adding that Israel’s plans were “inadmissible”.
Abdelatty said there was full coordination with Turkey on Gaza, and referred to a statement issued on Saturday by the OIC Ministerial Committee condemning Israel’s plan.
The OIC committee said Israel’s plan marked “a dangerous and unacceptable escalation, a flagrant violation of international law, and an attempt to entrench the illegal occupation”, warning that it would “obliterate any opportunity for peace”.
Mediating teams from Egypt, Qatar and the United States have been working for months to reach a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
The OIC urged world powers and the United Nations Security Council to “assume their legal and humanitarian responsibilities and to take urgent action to stop” Israel’s Gaza City plan, while ensuring immediate accountability for what it called Israeli violations of international law.