ShareCAIRO: Representative of HH the Amir Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, HH the Crown Prince Sheikh Mishal Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, said Kuwait is deeply affected by the Zionist occupation forces killing innocents in the Gaza Strip. In his speech to the Cairo Summit for Peace on Saturday, HH the Crown Prince said the continuous air raids have killed thousands of men, women and children and cut off electricity, water, food and fuel, while also imposing forced displacement of the people of the Gaza Strip.
This humanitarian crisis is caused by the lack of efforts by the international community to resolve the issue and bring violence to an end, HH Sheikh Mishal said, adding the international community has double-standards when it comes to dealing with the Zionist occupation force’s violations. He renewed Kuwait’s condemnation of the Zionist entity’s war crimes, calling on the international community to take serious action to immediately end the attacks and protect civilians. HH the Crown Prince also called for opening safe passages to deliver humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza.
Meanwhile, HH the Crown Prince affirmed Kuwait’s rejection of any attempts of forced displacement or putting more pressure on neighboring countries to deal with the impact of this displacement. He noted that Kuwait and its people will continue to support Palestinians and their rights for an independent country within the borderlines of the June 1967 agreement. He added peace is the only solution for the crisis, underlining the need to commit to the terms of international laws and conventions related to the issue, as well as the Arab Peace Initiative.
UN chief Antonio Guterres pleaded Saturday for a “humanitarian ceasefire” in the war between the Zionist entity and Hamas militants that has devastated much of Gaza, demanding “action to end this godawful nightmare”. Addressing the Cairo summit as the conflict raged into its third week, Guterres said the Palestinian enclave of 2.4 million people was living through “a humanitarian catastrophe” with thousands dead and more than a million displaced.
“We meet in the heart of a region that is reeling in pain and one step from the precipice,” he told the meeting that included the leaders of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates as well as of Italy and Spain and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The bloodshed began on Oct 7 when Hamas fighters killed at least 1,400 people and took more than 200 hostages, according to Zionist officials.
The Zionist entity says around 1,500 Hamas fighters were killed in clashes before its army regained control of the area under attack. The Zionist entity has hit back with a relentless bombing campaign, killing more than 4,300 Palestinians, mainly civilians, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, and cut off supplies of water, electricity, fuel and food.
Guterres said “the grievances of the Palestinian people are legitimate and long” after “56 years of occupation with no end in sight” but stressed that “nothing can justify the reprehensible assault by Hamas that terrorized (Zionist) civilians”. He then stressed that “those abhorrent attacks can never justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people”.
Jordan’s King Abdullah II called for “an immediate end to the war on Gaza” and condemned what he labelled “global silence” on Palestinian death and suffering. “The message the Arab world is hearing is loud and clear: Palestinian lives matter less than (Zionist) ones. Our lives matter less than other lives,” he charged. “The application of international law is optional. And human rights have boundaries — they stop at borders, they stop at races, and they stop at religions.”
The summit came on the day a first convoy of aid trucks rumbled into southern Gaza, which Guterres said needed to be rapidly scaled up, with “much more” help sent through. The UN has said that about 100 trucks per day are needed to meet worsening needs in Gaza. The Palestinians need “a continuous delivery of aid to Gaza at the scale that is needed”, the UN chief told the Cairo “Summit for Peace”.
Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi argued that the “only solution” to the Zionist-Palestinian conflict is “justice” and said that “Palestinians must realize their legitimate rights to self-determination” and have “an independent state on their land”. Abbas stressed his demand for a two-state solution and an “end to (the Zionist entity’s) occupation” and rejected what he has warned could be a “second Nakba” — a reference to the more than 760,000 Palestinians who fled or were driven from their lands during the creation of the state of Israel. “We will not leave,” he repeated three times at the end of his speech.
Cairo and Amman have repeatedly rejected calls for large numbers of refugees to enter Egypt from Gaza, warning that a “forced displacement” of Palestinians would lead to the “eradication the Palestinian cause”. Egypt and Jordan were the first Arab states to normalize relations with the Zionist entity, in 1979 and 1994 respectively, and have since been key mediators between Zionist and Palestinian officials.
Turkey’s foreign minister Hakan Fidan urged for the current conflict to become, “rather than a regional conflagration, a breeding ground for a just and lasting peace”. He also condemned “unconditional military aid to Israel which only serves to maintain the occupation”, while Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan condemned the failure of the UN Security Council to pass a resolution calling for a ceasefire after a US veto. – Agencies
