29 November 2023; MEMO: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres today that Israel must be held accountable in international courts for the war crimes it has committed in Gaza, Reuters has reported.
According to the Turkish presidency, in a phone call ahead of a UN Security Council meeting on Gaza planned for Wednesday, Erdogan told Guterres that, “Israel continues to trample shamelessly on international law, the laws of war and international humanitarian law by looking in the eyes of the international community.”
Israel launched an air and ground offensive against the Palestinians in Gaza after the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, led an attack on Israeli army barracks and settlements in the vicinity of Gaza on 7 October. The resistance fighters crossed the nominal border into the occupation state and took around 240 hostages. Since then, it has been revealed by Haaretz that helicopter gunships and tanks of the Israel Defence Forces had in fact killed many of the 1,200 soldiers and civilians alleged by Israel to have been killed by Hamas.
The apartheid occupation state has since killed more than 15,000 Palestinians in Gaza, 6,150 of whom were children, and 4,000 of whom were women. More than 36,000 people have been wounded by the Israeli offensive, and at least 7,000 are thought to be buried under the rubble of their homes destroyed by Israeli bombs.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, part of a “contact group” of Muslim countries that has been holding talks with Western leaders over Gaza, will attend the meeting in New York on Wednesday, his ministry said earlier today.
