Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi reiterated on Wednesday his country’s stance against any attempts to end the Palestinian issue by displacing the people of Gaza to Sinai. He also condemned the Israeli military actions that targeted civilians and called for an immediate international intervention to stop them.
“We reject all deliberate practices against civilians and call on the international community to intervene immediately to stop them,” he said.
President Al-Sisi condemned all military actions targeting civilians in violation of international laws.
In his speech during a press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Schulz, Al-Sisi expressed deep sorrow and pain and also offered sincere condolences to the victims of the brutal bombing of the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital.
He warned that the continuation of the current military operations will have security and humanitarian repercussions that could get out of control and even portend the danger of expanding the conflict in the absence of concerted efforts by all international and regional parties to immediately stop the current escalation.
President Al-Sisi stressed the need to establish an independent Palestinian state on the borders of 4 June 1967 with East Jerusalem as its capital.
The president pointed out that during his talks with Chancellor Olaf Schultz, he discussed in detail the military confrontations between the Israeli and Palestinian sides and the military escalation in the Gaza Strip, which has claimed the lives of thousands of civilians on both sides and also poses serious risks to civilians and the peoples of the region. He warned that the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is deteriorating in a deplorable and unprecedented manner.
He pointed out that during the talks, Egyptian efforts to contain the crisis were discussed through intensive contacts with the parties to the conflict and all international and regional parties over the past few days.
“The German Chancellor and I agreed on the urgent need to return to the path of pacification and open new horizons for settlement to avoid the region slipping into a vicious circle of violence and exposing the lives of civilians to further danger,” he added.
The president said that he stressed to the German Chancellor the need to deal with the Palestinian issue from a comprehensive and integrated perspective that guarantees the rights of Palestinians by establishing their independent state on the June 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.
“We agreed on the importance of working intensively to resume the peace process after containing the current escalation and finding prospects for a settlement of the Palestinian issue,” President Al-Sisi continued. “I also expressed to him Egypt’s grave concern about the serious deterioration of the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, and stressed the need to allow the passage of humanitarian and relief aid to the Strip and facilitate the work of relevant UN and humanitarian organizations.”
President Al-Sisi reaffirmed Egypt’s continued receipt of humanitarian aid and its commitment to transfer such aid to the Gaza Strip through the Rafah land crossing when conditions permit, taking into account that Egypt has not closed it since the outbreak of the crisis, but developments on the ground and repeated Israeli shelling of the Palestinian side of the crossing prevented its operation.
“Egypt rejects any attempts to liquidate the Palestinian issue with military tools or forcibly displaced Palestinians from their land or that this comes at the expense of other countries in the region,” he added.
Al-Sisi stressed in this regard that Egypt will remain steadfast in its support of the legitimate Palestinian right to its land and the struggle of the Palestinian people.
The Egyptian President warned that the liquidation of the Palestinian issue is extremely dangerous, saying: “We see that what is happening in Gaza now is not only a desire to direct military action against Hamas but an attempt to push the civilian population to seek refuge and displacement to Egypt.”
He pointed out that everyone interested in peace in the region does not accept this, not only in Egypt. “We are a sovereign country that has been keen over the past years since the signing of the peace agreement with Israel to make this path a strategic option that we are keen on and developing, and we also seek to make this path attractive for other countries to join it,” he said.
In another development, US President Joe Biden stressed the US readiness to provide support to Israel during his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday. He said that if there were no Israel, we would have invented Israel. During a press conference on the sidelines of his visit to Israel, the US president added that the war in Israel will be long, considering that the security and safety of Jews around the world is linked to Israel. “This makes me admire this country.”
“I wanted to be here today for the simple reason that I want the people of Israel and the people of the world to know the position of the United States,” the president said.
Biden condemned the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October, saying that “Hamas has committed evils and atrocities that make ISIS look somewhat more reasonable.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated on Wednesday his country’s position calling for the establishment of an independent sovereign Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, saying: “The establishment of an independent Palestinian state is the only way to reach a just, comprehensive and lasting peace in the Middle East, which Russia has always adopted.”
The Russian President described the targeting of the Baptist Hospital in Gaza as a “tragic and catastrophic incident,” which necessitates the need to urgently end the Palestinian-Israeli crisis by starting talks.
“Our talks with the leaders of the countries of the region were timely and fruitful, and no one wants the situation to worsen and the conflict to continue,” Putin said after talks with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in Beijing.
In a related context, the Ministry of Health in Gaza announced an increase in the death toll of Israeli shelling on the Strip to 3,478 dead and more than 12 thousand injured, most of them children and women.
The Palestinian Minister of Health Mai Al-Kailah stressed that the Gaza Strip suffers from an acute shortage of medicines, a major problem in accessing hospitals, water, and electricity outages, and that” water outages and the deterioration of the sanitation system increase the risks of disease outbreaks and epidemics.
The director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom, warned on Wednesday that the situation in the Gaza Strip is getting out of control, following the bombing of Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital, resulting in hundreds of deaths.
He stressed the need to stop violence by all parties, emphasizing the need to allow delivery of life-saving supplies because every second that passes without medical assistance loses more lives.
