AMMAN, 4 October 2004 — Governments around the Middle East yesterday hit out at Israel’s massive five-day-old incursion into Gaza, as the death toll hit 66 and the Palestinians pleaded for international support.
Iran accused Israel of committing genocide in the Gaza Strip and called for international intervention to halt the latest operation, while key Western ally Jordan warned the arrogance of the Jewish state was fuelling extremism around the region.
Palestinian Negotiations Minister Saeb Erekat said the lack of international reaction to the Israeli onslaught was encouraging Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to continue the onslaught.
“The absence of international reaction is encouraging Ariel Sharon to assert that the operation will continue, although the situation is getting worse and the Palestinian people are enduring massacres,” he said.
Arab League representatives decided that the 22-member bloc would make a joint appeal at the United Nations for urgent action to halt Israel’s “continuing war of extermination against the Palestinian people.”
“The genocide of Palestinians and violations of international laws by the Israelis means that action from the international community is needed to defend the defenseless people of Palestine,” the Iranian Foreign Ministry said.
“The brutal slaughter of innocent people in the Gaza Strip has further exposed the inhuman nature of the Zionist regime’s leaders to the public,” ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told the official IRNA news agency.
Iran does not recognize the Zionist state, which has regarded the Islamic republic as its No. 1 enemy since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq last year.
However neighboring Jordan, which signed a 1994 peace treaty with Israel, was also forthright in its condemnation.
“Israel’s arrogance and the pursuit of its policy of assassinations and mass killings of Palestinian civilians as well as the destruction of property and infrastructure in the Palestinian territories does not serve the peace process,” King Abdallah told a visiting British delegation.
“Such action will increase the cycle of violence and fuel the phenomenon of extremism in the region,” the official Petra news agency quoted him as saying.
King Abdallah’s comments were all the more striking as he has won plaudits in Israel for his outspoken criticism of the Palestinian leadership in recent weeks.
The king echoed that criticism yesterday calling on the Palestinian Authority “to settle its internal disputes and close its ranks in order to achieve the aspirations of the Palestinian people and to become an effective partner in the peace process”.
Another Western ally, Kuwait, hit out at what it described as Israel’s “criminal actions” against the Palestinian people and demanded international action to stop to them. “The Israeli policy of committing more killings and the destruction of property will lead the region to more violence and instability,” ministers said after their weekly meeting.
“The Cabinet calls on the international community, particularly the quartet members (the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States) and the UN Security Council, to intervene immediately and decisively to put an end to the Israeli criminal actions.”
In Cairo, the Arab League said there would be an “urgent appeal to the General Assembly and or Security Council” for the “international protection that is indispensable” to the Palestinian people.
Arab ambassadors called on the quartet to “to live up to its responsibility and move rapidly to take a decisive stand to end the Israeli aggression”.
The United States, Israel’s main ally, has expressed “regret” over civilian casualties from the offensive and called on Israel to use “only proportional force”.
But it has declined to condemn the incursion, saying that Israel had a right to defend itself.
Erekat told AFP the lack of stronger world condemnation was encouraging the Israeli premier to press the vast operation.
