Islamic nations slam Israel — and one another’s ties to it

By: AP | Dubai, United Arab Emirates |
May 16, 2021 10:00:41 pm
A league of Muslim nations on Sunday demanded that Israel halt assaults killing Palestinian civilians amid heavy preventing between it and Hamas within the Gaza Strip, at the same time as fissures between international locations over their recognition of Israel emerged.
An announcement by the 57-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation hewed intently to earlier ones issued by the Saudi-based group, together with backing the decades-old name for Palestinians to have their very own nation with East Jerusalem as its capital.
However, latest normalization offers between Israel and a few nations within the group — in addition to their very own considerations about Hamas — noticed diplomats at factors as a substitute criticize one another.
“The massacre of Palestinian children today follows the purported normalization,” Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif mentioned. “This criminal and genocidal regime has once again proven that friendly gestures only aggravate its atrocities.”
A lady reacts whereas standing on the rubble of a constructing that was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike on Saturday that housed The Associated Press, broadcaster Al-Jazeera and different media shops, in Gaza City, Sunday, May 16, 2021. (AP Photo/Adel Hana)
The previous week has seen a number of the worst violence throughout Israel and the Palestinian territory for the reason that 2014 battle in Gaza, with militants launching missiles and Israel pounding the blockaded coastal strip house to 2 million individuals with heavy fireplace. At least 188 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza with 1,230 individuals wounded. Eight individuals in Israel have been killed.
The Organization of Islamic Cooperation assertion referred to as on Israel to respect Muslims’ entry to Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest web site in Islam, in addition to cease settlers from forcibly evicting Palestinian households from their houses.
“The plight of the Palestinian people is the bleeding wound of the Islamic world today,” Afghan Foreign Minister Mohammad Haneef Atmar mentioned.
But the videoconference assembly noticed some delegates as a substitute flip their fireplace towards international locations like Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates, Muslim nations which reached normalization offers final 12 months to acknowledge Israel. While Egypt and Jordan earlier reached peace offers, supporters of the Palestinians criticized the brand new international locations for recognizing Israel earlier than the formation of an unbiased Palestinian state.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu joined Zarif in criticizing the normalization, although Israel maintains diplomatic ties with Ankara.
“There are a few who have lost their moral compass and voiced support for Israel,” he mentioned. “If there are half-hearted statements within our own family, how could we criticize others? Who will take our words seriously?”
Zarif additionally accused Israel of “genocide and crimes against humanity.”
“Make no mistake: Israel only understand the language of resistance and the people of Palestine are fully entitled to their right to defend themselves,” Zarif mentioned.
Hamas, which seized energy in Gaza in 2007, didn’t participate within the assembly, which got here earlier than consultations on the United Nations over the disaster.
Across the Arabian Peninsula, reactions to the preventing equally has been combined. In Qatar, house to the Al-Jazeera satellite tv for pc community, a whole lot turned out late Saturday night time to hearken to a speech by Hamas’ prime chief Ismail Haniyeh. Kuwait’s parliament speaker reportedly spoke with Haniyeh on Saturday, as did Qatar’s overseas minister.
Meanwhile, in Bahrain and the UAE, government-linked media hasn’t been protecting the present flare-up of violence nonstop like different networks within the area.
There are murmurs of dissent although. In Bahrain, civil society teams signed a letter urging the dominion to expel the Israeli ambassador. In the UAE, the place political events and protests are unlawful, Palestinians have expressed their anger quietly, fearful about dropping their residency allow. Some Emiratis even have expressed considerations.
“The region’s only democracy,” tweeted the Emirati author and political analyst Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi in writing about Israel’s strike on a Gaza constructing that housed the workplaces of The Associated Press and Al-Jazeera.

Hussein Ibish, a senior scholar on the Washington-based Arab Gulf States Institute, mentioned most Gulf Arab leaders concern Hamas’ rocket fireplace as “cynical, dangerous, unnecessarily provocative and endangering Israelis and Palestinians in Gaza alike.” That takes the strain off these Gulf leaders to reply, not like in different confrontations involving the Al-Aqsa Mosque or when Israeli settlers pressure Arab households out of their houses, he mentioned.

“There won’t be much sympathy for what is widely viewed in the Gulf as Israel’s heavy-handed and disproportionate retaliation,” Ibish wrote, “but it will be much easier for Gulf leaders and many citizens to regard the exchange as a tragic conflagration at the expense of ordinary people brought about by two leaderships over which they have neither control nor responsibility.”