The 57-nation Organisation of Islamic Co-operation has opened an emergency meeting to discuss the heavy fighting between Israel and the Gaza Strip’s militant Hamas rulers, the first major move among Middle East nations grappling with how to address the conflict.
Palestinian foreign minister Riad Malki of the Palestinian Authority, which administers autonomous enclaves in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, decried what he called Israel’s “cowardly attacks” at the start of the meeting.
He added: “We are facing a long-term occupation, that’s the base of the problem. Crimes are committed against the Palestinians without consequences.”
A man walks amid the rubble from buildings that were hit in Israeli air strikes on Sunday (Adel Hana/AP)
Mr Malki’s Palestinian Authority has no control over Hamas and the Gaza Strip, where the militants seized power in 2007.
Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu took a similarly hard line.
“Israel alone is responsible for the recent escalation in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza,” he said. “Our warnings to Israel last week went unheeded.”
Across the Arabian Peninsula and Persian Gulf states, reactions to the fighting has been mixed.
In Qatar, home to the Al-Jazeera satellite network, hundreds turned out late on Saturday night to listen to a speech by Hamas’s top leader Ismail Haniyeh. He now splits his time between Turkey and Qatar, both of which back Hamas, as does Iran.
Haniyeh vowed, as bodyguards stood behind him “The resistance will not give in.”
Palestinian rescuers look for survivors under the rubble of a destroyed building following deadly Israeli air strikes in Gaza City (Khalil Hamra/AP)
He added that “resistance is the shortest road to Jerusalem” and that Palestinians will not accept anything less than a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.
Mr Cavusoglu, the Turkish foreign minister, criticised Organisation of Islamic Co-operation members who recently reached recognition deals with Israel.
Those deals, as well as the concerns of some nations over Hamas, has seen a somewhat-muted response to the attacks as opposed to the full-throated response of decades past.
Mr Cavusoglu said: “There are a few who have lost their moral compass and voiced support for Israel.
“If there are half-hearted statements within our own family, how could we criticise others who (don’t) take our words seriously?”
PA Media