Turkey’s President calls on the Islamic world to take action over Gaza

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called on the Islamic world to take action against Israel in response to the latest deadly strike in the Gaza Strip. Erdogan, 70, told lawmakers from his AKP party today that Israel represented a threat to ‘all of humanity.’

He said: ‘I have some words to say to the Islamic world: what are you waiting for to take a common decision?’ Erdogan, who leads a Muslim-majority country of 85 million people, told lawmakers from his AKP party. ‘ Israel is not just a threat to Gaza but to all of humanity,’ he said.

‘No state is safe as long as Israel does not follow international law and does not feel bound by international law,’ Erdogan added, repeating an accusation that Israel is committing ‘genocide’ in Gaza. He also called Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu a ‘vampire’, and accused him of killing ‘innocent civilians in their tents’. He also took aim at the West for being ‘complicit’ with the ongoing war in the Middle East.

‘America, this blood is also on your hands. Heads of the states in Europe, you have become complicit in Israel’s vampirism because you remained silent,’ Erdogan said. ‘No ideology sees the burning to death of innocent civilians in their tents as legitimate. The world is watching the barbarism of this vampire called Netanyahu live,’ he added.

Erdogan’s fiery comments came as the UN Security Council met to discuss a deadly Israeli attack on a displacement camp west of Rafah on Tuesday that killed 21 people, according to a civil defence official in Hamas-run Gaza. Nearly two-dozen people were killed in the strike on the tent camp west of the city on Tuesday, just days after 45 people were killed at an encampment for displaced Palestinians that burned to ashes.

Gaza health authorities said yesterday that the second tent camp in the city had been hit, by Israeli tank shells, in an area Israel designated as a civilian evacuation zone. The IDF denied striking the area of al-Mawasi, west of Rafah. Despite the scenes of horror, Israel appears to be keen to carry the fight on, with a national security adviser openly admitting that the war with Hamas was likely to last through the end of the year.

In an interview with Israel’s Kan public broadcaster on Wednesday, Tzachi Hanegbi said ‘we are expecting another seven months of fighting’ to destroy the military and governing capabilities of Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad militant group. His remarks came as Israel finds itself increasingly isolated on the world stage nearly eight months into the war triggered by Hamas’ October 7 attack, with even the United States and other close allies expressing outrage over the toll on civilians.

Hanegbi defended Israel’s ongoing operations in Rafah, on Gaza’s border with Egypt, saying the frontier had become a ‘smuggling kingdom’ since Hamas seized power in Gaza in 2007. ‘Every rocket, every explosive device, every shot fired at Israel is because that border was breached,’ he said.

He said Israel now controls around 75% of the narrow buffer zone between Egypt and Gaza that was created as part of the 1979 peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. Egypt has expressed grave concerns about Israel’s Rafah offensive, saying it threatens the peace treaty.

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