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WASHINGTON: Western nations on Friday backed Israel’s right to defend itself against rocket attacks and pushed Egypt to help defuse the Gaza crisis, exposing the fault lines of a new divide with the Arab world.
While they deplored civilian casualties on both sides since Israel launched its latest operation against the Gaza Strip, the West stressed that Hamas had to halt the militant attacks into southern Israel.
“Israel has the right to protect its population from these kinds of attacks. I urge Israel to ensure that its response is proportionate,” European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said.
She echoed hopes voiced by Washington that Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Qandil, who crossed into Gaza for a brief visit on Friday, “will be able calm the situation.”
Washington has reached out to Egypt’s new Islamist leaders as well as to allies such as Turkey to use their sway with Palestinian leaders. The US “urged those who have a degree of influence with Hamas such as Turkey and Egypt and some of our European partners to use that influence to urge Hamas to de-escalate,” said deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes.
And State Department spokesman Mark Toner lashed out at Hamas, which has run the Gaza Strip since 2007, saying: “This is a situation that they’ve created by firing rockets on innocent Israeli civilians.
“You know, we obviously mourn civilian deaths on both sides. But the onus is on Hamas to stop its rocket attacks,” Toner told reporters. German Chancellor Angela Merkel also called on Cairo to use its influence on Hamas, her deputy spokesman Georg Streiter, stressing: “It is Hamas in Gaza that is responsible for the outbreak of the violence.”
Western leaders have also urged Israel to avoid civilian casualties and British Prime Minister David Cameron told his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu the main priority was to de-escalate the crisis.
Cameron called on Netanyahu “to do all he could to avoid civilian casualties” and prevent more violence “that would be in no one’s interest.” Speaking at Gaza City’s Shifa hospital after seeing the bodies of those killed in an alleged Israeli air strike, Qandil vowed to step up Cairo’s efforts to secure a ceasefire.
“Egypt will not hesitate to intensify its efforts and make sacrifices to stop this aggression and achieve a lasting truce,” he told reporters on Friday.
But he placed the blame squarely on what he called Israel’s “aggression.” Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi also branded the Israeli assault launched on Tuesday in which 23 Palestinians have been killed as a “blatant aggression against humanity,” the official MENA news agency said.
“I tell them in the name of all the Egyptian people that the Egypt of today is not the Egypt of yesterday and that the Arabs of today are different than the Arabs of yesterday,” he said after Friday prayers at a Cairo mosque. “Cairo will not leave Gaza on its own.”
Egypt, which in 1979 became the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel, often plays a mediator role between Israel and Hamas, and Mursi has been fielding calls from world leaders over the rising violence.
French President Francois Hollande expressed “deep concern” in a phone call with Mursi and “stressed the role Egypt could play to cut the tensions,” the president’s office said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin also told the Egyptian leader that Moscow supported Egypt’s efforts to halt the escalating violence, the Kremlin said.
“The Russian head of state underlined the need to stop the armed confrontation and called on the sides involved in the conflict to exercise restraint and stop military actions resulting in civilian deaths,” it said. Amid fears Israel is poised for a ground invasion of Gaza, Saudi King Abdullah called for cooler heads to prevail. The monarch, whose country is a heavyweight in the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, told Mursi “that things must calm down and reason and wisdom must reign over passionate reactions,” the state news agency SPA said. The Palestinians’ traditional allies reacted angrily to Israel’s onslaught.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu called the offensive a “crime against humanity,” Anatolia news agency said. While Iran — accused by Israel of being the Gaza militants’ main supplier of rocket power — branded the Israeli strikes as “organised terrorism.”
The increasingly influential Arabian Peninsula state of Qatar also warned the “vicious attack (on Gaza) must not pass unpunished,” demanding urgent action at the United Nations.
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