Supply of aid to people of gaza must continue india

Supply of aid to people of gaza must continue india

Expressing concern over the worsening situation, External Affairs Ministry says all hostages should be released; Israeli official reiterates call that Hamas be seen as a terrorist organisation.

India has expressed concern over the worsening situation in Gaza, where Israel has resumed bombing, calling for the resumption of humanitarian supplies to Palestinians and the release of all hostages taken by the Hamas group during the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

The statement by the External Affairs Ministry came even as a high-level delegation from Israel’s Foreign Ministry, led by Director-General Eden Bar Tal, was in New Delhi for talks this week.

On Tuesday, Mr. Bar Tal met Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri and Deputy National Security Advisers T.V. Ravichandran and Pavan Kapoor at the National Security Council Secretariat.

“We are concerned at the situation in Gaza,” the External Affairs Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday. “It is important that all hostages are released. We also call for supply of humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza to be sustained,” it added.

Since the October 7 attacks and Israel’s bombardment of Gaza in which more than 45,000 people have been killed (including about 400 since the January 19 ceasefire), India has issued only a few such statements.

Israel has refused to extend the ceasefire without more hostage releases by Hamas. Many of the 59 remaining hostages are believed to have died. A total of 250 were originally taken on October 7, 2023, when about 1,200 people were killed.

India has refrained thus far, in its statements, from naming Israel for the bombardment, or from naming Hamas. The government has also not designated Hamas as a terror organisation thus far.

Speaking at the Raisina Dialogue in Delhi, Mr. Bar Tal made it clear that Israeli operations were unlikely to stop, and questioned how many of those killed in Israel’s bombardment were civilians, calling for the international community to see Hamas as a terrorist organisation.

“In order to solve the problem, one has to look at the root causes of the problem,” he said, referring to the current Israel-Hamas issue of “radicals and moderates”, indicating there were no purely diplomatic solutions.

Speaking at the same session, Abla Abdel-Latif, executive director of the Egyptian Centre for Economic Studies, said, “The reality is that things started 70 years before with the occupation of Palestine and all Palestinians have been living in an open jail in Gaza.”

The West Asia conflict was not at the centre of discussions at the three-day Raisina dialogue that concluded on Wednesday, as the Russia-Ukraine conflict dominated the sessions, with more than half the gathered Ministers attending the conference coming from European countries.

However, James Lawless, Minister for Education and Innovation of Ireland, a country that along with Spain has been severely critical of Israeli actions in the aftermath of the terror attacks, said that while there were many differences between the two conflicts, and Israelis have a “history of hardships”, that did not give them a “licence to perform whatever actions they wish to their neighbours”.

“It’s very regrettable that there were more rockets and attacks into Gaza overnight,” Mr. Lawless told The Hindu. “That’s a big setback for the peace process.”

He said that a resolution could only come from a two-state solution.