Arab leaders are rallying for the need to activate international accountability mechanisms in the face of Israel’s continued aggressions, including the bombing of UN agency-aided schools and “safe zones”, as they renewed calls for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza.
In the last 24 hours, Israel’s military had bombed a UN-run school as well as a “safe zone” it designated in the Gaza Strip, leaving at least 42 Palestinians dead while wounding dozens.
The attacks on Tuesday hit the UN’s Al-Razi School in the central Nuseirat refugee camp and a main street lined with market stalls in the southern Al-Mawasi area, where thousands of displaced Palestinians had sought shelter.
At least 25 people were killed in Al-Razi while 17 were killed in Al-Mawasi, according to Gaza’s government media office while more than 70 people were injured in the attacks.
Earlier, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, or UNRWA, noted that 70 percent of its schools in Gaza have been hit and bombed since the start of the conflict on Oct 7.
Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of UNRWA, said on his X account that at least eight schools were hit in the last 10 days, including six UNRWA schools.
“All rules of war have been broken in Gaza. Losing our common humanity must not become the new norm,” said Lazzarini.
The Israel Defense Forces said on X that based on precise intelligence, the IDF “struck terrorists who operated in a UNRWA school in the area of Nuseirat”.
International organization Save the Children said on its X account that the recent attacks on schools and hospitals in Gaza were “horrific” as the “healthcare and education systems are being decimated before our eyes”. It said children “cannot continue to be at the forefront of this conflict” and reiterated that hospitals and schools should never be targets.
The Saudi Cabinet, led by Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, condemned the “continuation of genocidal massacres against the Palestinian people”, reiterating the demand for an immediate and permanent cease-fire and protection of unarmed civilians, the Saudi Press Agency reported.
Necessity stressed
Further, it stressed the necessity of activating international accountability mechanisms.
Speaking to reporters at a joint news conference during his visit to Luxembourg on Tuesday, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi urged the United States, the European Union, and the global community to “come together and stand by international law, international humanitarian law, and by the rights of all peoples to live in peace and security, including the Palestinians”.
Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi briefed his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron in a phone call on Tuesday on Egypt’s mediation efforts between Israel and Hamas, while he stressed the need for uniting international efforts to ensure the success of mediation and to deliver adequate humanitarian aid to the battered enclave.
Egyptian and Qatari mediators, as well as US negotiators, reconvened over the past week in hopes of reaching a cease-fire agreement, which would include the prisoner swap deal between Israel and Hamas, but blamed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the delay over his “new conditions”.
Belal Alakhras, a political analyst and Palestinian researcher at the University of Malaya in Malaysia, said the “issue” was that the world “has treated Israel as more than just an occupying force”.
“We’re on the edge of global chaos. This situation shouldn’t be left to the calculus of the United States on whether it will allow Israel to continue this war or not. Other major global powers need to step up and ramp up pressure before it’s too late,” Alakhras told China Daily.
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