Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, on Sunday said that Israel was implementing a policy of pushing Palestinians out of Gaza through a war that he said meets the “legal definition of genocide”.
Safadi, whose country borders the West Bank and absorbed the bulk of Palestinians after the creation of Israel in 1948, also said that Israel had created hatred that would haunt the region and define generations to come.
“What we are seeing in Gaza is not just simply the killing of innocent people and the destruction of their livelihoods (by Israel) but a systematic effort to empty Gaza of its people,” Safadi said at a conference in Doha.
“We have not seen the world yet come to the place we should come to … an unequivocal demand for ending this war; a war that is within the legal definition of genocide.”
The extent of destruction and indiscriminate bombing of thousands of civilians belies Israel’s avowed goal of seeking to wipe out Hamas, Safadi added.
Safadi also said that major differences had surfaced in talks between a delegation of Arab ministers and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington last Friday over the U.S. administration’s military support for Israel and its refusal to call for a ceasefire.