Achi news desk-
The foreign ministers of France, Egypt and Jordan called on Saturday for an “immediate and permanent ceasefire” in Gaza and the release of all hostages held by the Palestinian Hamas.
Speaking at a joint press conference in Cairo, France’s top diplomat, Stephane Sjourn, said his government would present a draft resolution to the UN Security Council establishing a “political” settlement of the war.
According to him, the text will include “all the criteria for a two-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the peace plan that has long been advocated by the international community but opposed by the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
On Monday, the Security Council adopted a resolution demanding an “immediate ceasefire” in Hamas-run Gaza, where the Health Ministry says the death toll has reached 32,705, most of them women and children.
The war began when Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, which resulted in about 1,160 Israeli deaths, according to official Israeli figures from AFP.
The International Court of Justice on Thursday ordered Israel to “ensure that urgent humanitarian aid” reaches civilians in Gaza, saying that “famine has begun” after more than five months of fighting.
But “international law no longer has any influence on the ground when it comes to Israel,” Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safdi said at the press conference in Cairo.
“The real disaster is the inability of the international community to prevent” the humanitarian disaster, Safdi said.
Alluding to the presence of extreme right-wing ministers in the Israeli government, he said that the failure to provide sufficient aid is “a political decision by an extreme government that has decided to use hunger as a weapon.”
The three ministers renewed their governments’ support for the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency, UNRWA, which has faced a funding crisis since Israel claimed that a dozen of its 13,000 workers in Gaza were involved in the October 7 attack.
“Israel is not only starving Palestinians, but wants to kill the only entity capable of standing in the way of hunger,” said Spadi.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri said that Gaza “cannot tolerate any more destruction and humanitarian suffering”, and called on Israel to open its land crossings with the Gaza Strip for humanitarian aid.
Almost all aid to the area flowed through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, where world leaders and the UN accused Israel of preventing shipments.
