Israel is carrying out 'pre-established plans' for the West Bank and Lebanon, accuses Qatar

Photo: Michael M. Santiago Agence France-Presse Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani speaks during the United Nations General Assembly at UN Headquarters in New York on September 24, 2024.

Agence France-Presse in Doha

Posted at 9:01 am

• Middle East

The emir of Qatar, whose country has played a key role in efforts to broker a truce in Gaza, accused Israel on Tuesday of expanding hostilities in the Middle East to implement “pre-established plans” for the occupied West Bank and Lebanon.

“The simplest and surest way to stop the escalation on the border with Lebanon would have been to end the war of extermination in Gaza,” Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani told the Qatari Consultative Council.

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“But Israel has deliberately chosen to expand the aggression to implement pre-arranged plans in other areas such as the West Bank and Lebanon, because it considers that space provides the opportunity,” he added in his annual opening speech to the legislature of the small Gulf emirate.

Qatar has played a key role in efforts to secure a ceasefire in Gaza and has called for a truce in Lebanon, where Israel stepped up operations last month against Iran-backed Hezbollah.

The West Bank, occupied by Israel since 1967, has seen a surge in violence since the start of the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip, which was triggered on October 7, 2023 by Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel from the small Palestinian territory. coastal.

The Qatari leader said Israel was “exploiting the international community’s inaction to implement dangerous settlement plans in the West Bank.”

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The Hamas attack on October 7, 2023 led to The death of 1,206 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures and including hostages killed or held captive in Gaza.

At least 42,344 Palestinians have been killed, mostly civilians, in the Israeli retaliatory offensive in Gaza, according to data from the Hamas government's Health Ministry, deemed reliable by the UN.

“After all this death and destruction” in the region, “Israel will have no choice but to abide by what has been agreed within the international community regarding the two-state solution,” the Emir of Qatar added.

Qatar and its Arab neighbors have repeatedly reiterated their demand for a settlement of the conflict based on the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.