Türkiye repeats its call for diplomatic solution to Israel-Palestine question
ANKARA
The international community has a historic responsibility in ending the war in Gaza, the Turkish foreign minister has said, repeating Ankara’s calls for resolving the conflict through diplomatic means.
“I call on Israel and its supporters to seek a diplomatic solution while we still can,” Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said at a special session of the U.N. Security Council late on Jan. 23. The session that focused on the situation in Gaza gathered permanent and temporary members of the U.N. Security Council as well as regional prominent countries together.
“The war that continues in Gaza and beyond will neither yield peace nor surrender. We have a historic responsibility to end this war,” Fidan said. Immediate and lasting ceasefire, the release of all the hostages and uninterrupted flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza are indispensable conditions of a process for reaching peace, the minister stated.
Fidan underlined the failure of the international community in ending the bloodshed in Gaza and West Bank, saying “Gaza was an open prison. It has now turned into a battlefield in which the Israeli prime minister is slaughtering the civilians through military operation to prolong his political life.”
The war in Gaza cannot be legitimized as Israel’s right to self-defense and those who argue this never mention about the Palestinians’ security and right to self-defense, the minister stated.
“The current picture in Gaza and West Bank demonstrates who most has the right to security and self-defense.”
According to Fidan, Israel is committing serious war crimes and those responsible of these should pay the price, welcoming the ongoing trial at the International Court of Justice on the grounds that Israel has been breaching the 1948-dated convention to preventing genocide.
Concerns of the spread of the war
The Turkish foreign minister has also repeated Ankara’s concerns of the spread of the war to the region and the rest of the world. “What we were mentioning as a risk has now become real,” he said, referring to the recent developments in the Red Sea, Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Pakistan.
“There is a risk that this escalation will turn into a strategic vortex from which no one can escape,” Fidan warned.
Everyone knows perfectly well that temporary solutions will not work regarding the Palestinian issue and scenarios about who will govern Gaza in the post-war era are not helpful and realistic. The future of Gaza will be decided by the Palestinians, Fidan said, calling on the international community to exert efforts for launching a new process for the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state on the basis of 1967 borders and with east Jerusalem as its capital.
“To this end, we want to renew our proposal for the establishment of a mechanism of guarantorship for achieving peace and monitoring it between Israelis and Palestinians,” he stated.
Underscoring the fact that the continuation of the current situation in Gaza will further shake the fundamental principles and moral values of the international system, Fidan added, “Therefore, we have to immediately act to stop the erosion of these values for the future of humanity.”
In New York, Fidan had bilateral meetings with a number of his counterparts, including Austria, France, Lebanon, Algeria, Norway as well as U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres.