• Macron, Sisi urge return to peace process
• Jordan’s queen rues West’s ‘glaring double standard’
• Sunak backs ‘humanitarian pause’
• Khamenei says US ‘directing’ Israel bombing

ANKARA: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, in his strongest comments yet on the Gaza crisis, said on Wednesday the Hamas was not a terrorist organisation but a liberation group fighting to protect Palestinian lands.

“Hamas is not a terrorist organisation, it is a liberation group, ‘mujahideen’ waging a battle to protect its lands and people,” he told lawmakers from his ruling AK Party, using an Arabic word denoting those who fight for their faith.

Erdogan also slammed Western powers for supporting Israel’s bombing of Gaza and called for an immediate ceasefire, the unhindered entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza and for Muslim countries to work together to stop the violence.

Erdogan accused Israel of taking advantage of Turkiye’s “good intentions” and said he had cancelled a previously planned visit to Israel. “I shook the hand of this man named Netanyahu one time in my life,” Erdogan said, referring to his meeting with Israeli prime minister at the UN General Assembly last month.

Meanwhile, in Cairo, French President Emmanuel Macron met his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Wednesday called for a de-escalation, ceasefire and return to diplomacy, stressing that “the lack of a political horizon” had led to the current unrest. Macron echoed Sisi’s support for a “two-state solution”.

“It is difficult at the moment to talk about the resumption of a peace process,” Macron said at the joint news conference, adding however that “it is more necessary than ever”.

Regarding a ground intervention by Israeli forces in Gaza, Macron said “If it is entirely targeted against terrorist groups, that is a choice that it has, but if it is a massive operation that would endanger civilian populations, in that case I think it would be an error for Israel,” Macron told reporters in Egypt.

Earlier, Jordan’s King Abdullah II, who hosted Macron on Tuesday, warned against “the continuation of the war on the Gaza Strip, which might lead to an explosion in the situation in the region”. He also visited the occupied West Bank for talks with Mahmud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority.

‘Double standard’

Jordanian Queen Rania accused Western leaders of a “glaring double standard” for not condemning Israel’s killing of Palestinian civilians in its bombardment of Gaza, in an interview aired on Wednesday.

“The people all around the Middle East, including in Jordan, we are just shocked and disappointed by the world’s reaction to this catastrophe that is unfolding. In the last couple of weeks, we have seen a glaring double standard in the world,” she told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.

“But what we’re seeing in the last couple of weeks, we’re seeing silence in the world”, she said. “Are we being told that it is wrong to kill a family, an entire family, at gunpoint, but it’s OK to shell them to death?” Queen Rania asked.

Queen Rania said of the West’s refusal to back a ceasefire that “the silence is deafening and, to many in our region, it makes the Western world complicit through their support and through the cover that they give Israel”.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told parliament on Wednesday he supported a humanitarian pause in Gaza to allow the safe delivery of aid to civilians, but he rejected calls for a full ceasefire.

“We recognise for all of that to happen, there has to be a safer environment, which of course necessitates specific pauses as distinct from a ceasefire,” Sunak said to lawmakers at a weekly parliamentary question and answer session. Later on Wednesday a plane landed in Egypt to deliver humanitarian supplies to people in Gaza.

However, Sunak’s spokesman said “full ceasefire would only benefit Hamas”.

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said “The United States is in some way directing the crime that is being committed in Gaza”, adding that the hands of Americans “were tainted with the blood of the oppressed, children, patients, women and others”. “America is a definite accomplice of criminals,” said Khamenei during a speech in Tehran.

“Let everyone know that in this matter and future matters, the Palestinian nation is victorious and the future world is the world of Palestine, not the world of the Zionist regime,” Khamenei said, referring to Israel.

Published in Dawn, October 26th, 2023