HAMAS has welcomed the joint statement issued by the foreign ministers of the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Jordan, Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
In a statement yesterday, Hamas praised the ministers’ demand for the full and immediate implementation of the roadmap, and for the United States, the Peace Council and the mediators to actively enforce it, so that the Israeli government cannot obstruct or slip out of its commitments.
Hamas also welcomed the ministers’ rejection of Israeli attempts to deny the Palestinian people the right of self-determination and the right to an independent, fully sovereign state with Jerusalem as its capital.
The eight ministers issued their statement on Sunday, condemning Israel’s rejection of the roadmap for the Trump plan, embodied in Security Council Resolution 2803.
Hamas accepted the roadmap in late July.
It provides for the movement’s disarmament and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Netanyahu formally rejected the document, demanding what he called real disarmament first.
That same day in Egypt, Trump’s son-in-law and special envoy Jared Kushner met the Hamas leadership, before travelling on to Israel.
Netanyahu has been a friend of Kushner’s father Charles for decades.
The Charles and Seryl Kushner Foundation, which Kushner and his siblings co-directed, gave at least $38,000 between 2011 and 2013 to American Friends of Bet El Yeshiva, the fundraising arm of an institution in the illegal West Bank settlement of Beit El.
The government Kushner is asking the mediators to trust contains the minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who used a podcast interview released on Sunday calling for the killing of thirty to forty Palestinians in Gaza every night, whether or not they pose any danger at the time.
‘There are people there who are not worthy of life. They shouldn’t live. They’re not even people,’ the minister said.
He attacked Netanyahu for scaling back operations under the ceasefire, called for the full occupation of Gaza and the mass expulsion of its population, backed a return to assassinations, and said he regarded the whole of the Strip as belonging to Israel.
He has also demanded that ‘all of Lebanon’ be made to burn.
The Gaza Rights Centre said on Sunday that the remarks fall squarely within the international legal definition of incitement to genocide.
It asked the International Criminal Court to incorporate Ben-Gvir’s statements into its existing investigation into war crimes in Palestine, saying they are direct evidence of the intent behind what Israel has done in Gaza.
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