Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry stressed on Wednesday the importance of ensuring that Israel refrains from any military action in Rafah that would end up by displacing the Palestinian people or forcing them to move to neighboring countries.
Shoukry made the remarks during a session entitled “The Role of the G20 in Dealing with Current International Tensions,” that was held on the sidelines of the G20 Foreign Ministers’ meeting in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Ahmed Abu Zeid said Shoukry expressed his thanks to the Brazilian side for inviting Egypt to take part in the group’s meetings.
Talking about the unprecedented crisis the global system is facing now, Shoukry reviewed the failure of the international system in maintaining its principles and customs, saying the international law and the international humanitarian law are being violated in the Gaza Strip in a war that resulted in the deaths of more than 29,000 Palestinians, two-thirds of whom are women and children with hospitals being bombed, universities and schools being demolished, and places of worship, including mosques and churches, being destroyed.
Also, the international system failed to preserve the idea of an international community in which compassion and values such as solidarity prevail over exclusion, fear, revenge and racism, Shoukry said, making clear that a complete siege was imposed by Israel on more than two million Palestinians in Gaza, and they were left either to die of hunger or were forced to flee from one place to another.
Despite all this, Shoukry said, many countries have refrained from demanding that this hateful war to stop, and no one talks about censorship practiced on media or the current distortion of facts by referring to Palestinian losses as deaths rather than as killings, which leads us to question whether all lives important for everyone.
Although the current war on Gaza is considered the bloodiest and most destructive war in contemporary history, we have witnessed continued determination in the Security Council to obstruct calls for an immediate cessation of hostilities, he said.
Shoukry called on the G20 and its members to end the current polarization, and urged them to work seriously towards a sincere and full commitment to international law, international humanitarian law and relevant United Nations resolutions, and to work to achieve an immediate and sustainable cessation of hostilities, and unhindered access to humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people.
At the end, he said it is not possible to wait for a new aggression against Rafah, and for the war in Gaza to continue in a way that would lead to more killings, suffering and destruction, stressing the need to stop the war now.
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