Their warning comes as Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza continues unabated, with some 600 violations of the ceasefire in the last seven weeks, and reports that two people were killed in the latest round of attacks on Saturday in the northern town of Beit Lahiya.
The foreign ministers of Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and the United Arab Emirates issued a joint statement on Friday that expressed “deep concern” over a recent Israeli military announcement that the “Rafah Crossing will open in the coming days exclusively for the exit of residents from the Gaza Strip to Egypt”.
The announcement, which breaches Israeli obligations under the first phase of a United States-led peace plan, was made on Wednesday by an Israeli military unit called the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), stating that one-way crossing would be allowed with Israeli “security approval” in coordination with Egypt.
However, Egypt and its cosignatories slammed the plan, expressing their “complete rejection of any attempts to displace the Palestinian people from their land” and stressing the need for Israel to fully comply with US President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan, which calls for the Rafah crossing to be opened in both directions.
The Rafah crossing has been mostly closed throughout the war.
Since the October 10 ceasefire took effect under Trump’s plan, Israeli authorities have stalled on reopening it to allow desperately needed aid to enter and people requiring medical treatment to leave, citing Hamas’s failure to return the bodies of all captives and the need for coordination with Egypt. Only one captive’s body remains in Gaza, and retrieval has been hampered by the widespread destruction of the enclave under Israeli bombardment.
The ministers said they appreciated Trump’s peace efforts, which foresee the formation of a technocratic Palestinian government supported by a multinational stabilisation force under the supervision of an international “board of peace”, insisting that his plan move forward “without delay or obstruction”.
They urged that conditions be established allowing the Palestinian Authority to “resume its responsibilities in Gaza”, calling for “sustainable peace” that would enable the two-state solution to be rolled out, with “an independent Palestinian state on the June 4, 1967 borders, including Gaza and the West Bank, with East Jerusalem as its capital”.
The Israeli army continues to control the southern and eastern belts of the Strip, along with large parts of northern Gaza, spanning more than 50 percent of the enclave’s total area.
Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has killed at least 70,125 Palestinians and wounded 171,015 since October 2023.
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