Deputy PM Dar calls for immediate ceasefire in Gaza

ISLAMABAD: Strongly condemning the use of hunger and starvation as a weapon of war by the Israeli forces, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Mohammad Ishaq Dar urged the international community to take action to stop this collective punishment unleashed on the Palestinians and help ensuring immediate ceasefire and unimpeded flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza.

“Recent attacks by Israeli settlers on aid convoys as well as seizure of Rafah border crossing with Egypt amounts to deliberate blocking of humanitarian supplies with a clear intent to starve the civilian population,” the deputy prime minister said while addressing the Extraordinary Meeting of the D-8 Council of Foreign Ministers in Istanbul.

He said the world was witnessing indiscriminate killings of civilians with a disproportionately large number of women and children. “Israeli forces are systematically bombing hospitals and vital infrastructure to target the very existence of Palestinians.”

According to the World Health Organization, he said only 12 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals were functional, that too barley. More strikingly, 84% of all health facilities are either destroyed or damaged, all most all certainly by design. Israel’s incessant and brutal aggression is a blatant attempt to wipe out the Palestinian population, Ishaq Dar said adding that the world was witnessing one of the worst massacres of our time being perpetrated by Israeli occupation forces, in total disregard of the international law world opinion and ICJ orders.

The Deputy PM demanded that the order of the International Court of Justice directing Israel to immediately halt its military offensive in Rafah must be implemented without delay. “International community must act to halt the killing and arrest humanitarian suffering.”

Pakistan believes that there can be no lasting peace in the Middle East without a comprehensive resolution of all outstanding Arab-Israeli disputes, Deputy PM Dar said adding that the establishment of a sovereign, viable and contiguous Palestinian state was an absolutely prerequisite for regional peace and stability.

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The D-8 must use its political as well as economic leverage at all the relevant international fora to end the suffering of the Palestinians people, he stressed.