‘Collective human duty to stop bloodshed’: Palestine’s Foreign Minister at UN
Israel is vowing again to destroy Hamas, rejecting calls for a cease-fire from the UN chief, the Palestinians, and many countries at a high-level UN meeting and saying the war in Gaza is not merely its own but “the war of the free world.”
Israel's Foreign Minister Eli Cohen also dismissed calls for “proportionality” in the country's response to Hamas' surprise attacks on October 7 that killed 1,400 people. More than 5,700 Palestinians have since been killed in Gaza, according to its Health Ministry.
Cohen told the UN Security Council the proportionate response to the October 7 massacre is “a total destruction to the last one of the Hamas,” calling the extremist group “the new Nazis.”
“It is not only Israel's right to destroy Hamas. It's our duty,” he said.
Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki said he came to the meeting “to stop … the ongoing massacres being deliberately and systematically and savagely perpetrated by Israel. Over 2 million Palestinians are on a survival mission every day, every night.”
Under international law, al-Maliki said, “it is our collective human duty to stop” the Israeli attacks and bloodshed.