Turkey urges Muslim unity against Israel’s Gaza plan

Muslim nations must act in unison and rally international opposition against Israel’s plan to take control of Gaza City, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said on Saturday after talks in Egypt.

Regional powers Egypt and Turkey both condemned the plan on Friday. Ankara has said it marked a new phase in what it called Israel’s genocidal and expansionist policies, while calling for global measures to stop the plan’s implementation.

Israel rejects such description of its actions in Gaza.

Speaking at a joint press conference in El Alamein with his Egyptian counterpart Badr Abdelatty, after also meeting Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, Fidan said the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation had been called 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.

Russia’s foreign ministry on Saturday condemned Israel’s plan to take control of Gaza City, saying it risked worsening the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.

Implementing such plans “risks worsening the already dramatic situation in the Palestinian enclave, which shows all the signs of a humanitarian disaster”, said a ministry statement.

Greece on Saturday joined EU countries in dropping food aid over Gaza, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said.

“This morning, two aircraft of the Hellenic Air Force dropped 8.5 tonnes of essential food supplies in areas of Gaza,” Mitsotakis said on Facebook.

“The operation was organised in collaboration with countries from the European Union and the Middle East, aiming to support the basic needs of people in the afflicted region.”

“Greece will continue to undertake initiatives for the immediate cessation of hostilities, the release of hostages, and the unhindered flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza. It is the duty of all of us to put an end to human suffering immediately,” he said.

Western countries including Britain, France, and Spain have recently partnered with Middle Eastern nations to deliver humanitarian supplies by air to the Palestinian enclave.

But the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees Philippe Lazzarini has warned that airdrops alone would not avert the worsening hunger.

The UN estimates that Gaza needs at least 600 trucks of aid per day to meet residents’ basic needs.

Concern has escalated about the situation in the Gaza Strip after more than 21 months of war, which started after Palestinian militant group Hamas carried out a deadly attack against Israel in October 2023.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces mounting pressure to secure a ceasefire to bring the territory’s more than two million people back from the brink of famine and free the hostages held by Palestinian militants.

Agencies