Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates, Ayman Safadi, said that “the war that we see unfolding in Gaza is only one manifestation of the horror that occupation has been bringing on Palestinians for decades.”
Safadi was speaking at a joint press conference with the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell; Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, José Manuel Albares, and the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) Secretary-General, Nasser Kamel, on Monday, at the end of the 8th UfM Regional Forum of the Union Foreign Ministers, which was held in Barcelona, co-chaired by Jordan and the European Union, and hosted by Spain.
“We all condemn the killing of civilians on October 7. And we say what we’re seeing today is also an outcome of an occupation that has shown no signs of ending the policies of a government that has systematically worked to undermine the prospects for peace and to deny the Palestinian people their right
s. A government in which ministers and acting ministers say Palestinian people must be wiped off the face of the earth. They deny the humanity of the Palestinian people. They deny their culture. They deny their history. They simply deny their right to exist. This is terrorism too,” Safadi said at the conference.
Safadi added, “Before this conflict started, this year has been the bloodiest for the Palestinians in the West Bank. The bloodiest in decades. Not only were settler terrorism and confiscation of land and expansion of settlements, but the political pronouncement and the policy of the Israeli government were to act as if there is no Palestinian issue, as if they can parachute over the Palestinian people, over their rights and have regional peace. This conflict has shown that this cannot be the case.”
He went to say that “this conflict has shown that the only way for all of us in the region to have peace is for the Palestinian people to be treated as equal human beings to have their rights fulfilled, s
o that Palestinians and Israelis can live in peace.”
“Today we came for a very open, very frank, very blunt conversation. We agreed and we disagreed. Some of our colleagues still call the killing of 15,000 Palestinians, destruction of over 160,000 homes, the complete devastation of hospitals, the denial of food, water, fuel, medicine, ‘self-defense’. We call it blatant aggression,” the foreign minister emphasized.
“War crimes are being committed by Israel, and what’s happening in Gaza is within the realm of the legal definition of genocide,” Safadi emphasized.
“We demand that a ceasefire is implemented immediately, because with every minute that this aggression is allowed to continue, Palestinians are dying not just by Israeli bullets, they are dying by their deprivation of water, medicine, electricity and other basic essentials,” Safadi underlined.
Source: Jordan News Agency