Qatar’s prime minister offered a stinging criticism of Israel and the international community on Tuesday over the ongoing Israeli-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, who also serves as Qatar’s foreign minister, said a two-state solution is required to end the conflict and warned that Hamas’s October 7th attack and the Israeli response shows the region cannot go back to the way it was before.
“Gaza is not there anymore. I mean, there is nothing over there,” he told a panel meeting at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “It’s carpet bombing everywhere.”
He also brought up the ongoing tensions in the West Bank, which have also seen Palestinians killed by Israeli security forces, and urged an end to Palestinian divisions.
“We cannot have a two-state solution without having a government and politicians in Israel who believe in co-existing together side by side peacefully and we cannot have all this ongoing without ending this war,” he said.
He warned that a military confrontation in Middle East waterways “will not contain” the attacks by Houthi rebels who on Monday fired a missile which struck a US-owned ship just off the coast of Yemen in the Gulf of Aden.
“What we have right now in the region is a recipe of escalation everywhere,” Sheikh Mohammed added.
Elsewhere, Israel said one of its troops was “slightly injured” in an exchange of fire along the country’s border with Egypt, which Cairo attributed to drug smuggling. One person in Egypt was killed.
The statement from the Israeli military late on Monday said the fighting happened near the Nitzana border crossing with Egypt on the Sinai Peninsula, and that there were 20 armed suspects.
The Israelis and the suspects exchanged fire, with Israel saying “hits were identified” among the suspects, without elaborating.
The Israeli soldier who was hit “was evacuated to a hospital to receive medical treatment and her family has been informed”, the military said.
The Israeli military did not identify the suspects.
An Egyptian military statement on Tuesday described the suspects involved as trying to smuggle drugs. It said one person was killed and six people were arrested afterwards.
Egypt and Israel have had a peace deal since 1979, but Israel’s months-long war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip has strained ties.
Speaking in Davos, Sheikh Mohammed warned of the massive destruction across Gaza and criticised Israel for rejecting a ceasefire.
Israel’s defence minister had said a day earlier that the intense offensive in the southern Gaza Strip will soon be scaled back, but ruled out a ceasefire.
More than 100 days into Israel’s war against Hamas, Palestinian authorities said the death toll in the enclave has passed 24,000.
Hamas’s October 7th attack from Gaza into southern Israel, which triggered the war, killed around 1,200 people and saw some 250 others taken hostage by militants.
Meanwhile, Israel said a barrage of 15 rockets was launched towards southern Israel on Tuesday, damaging a store.
Israeli media said it was one of the strongest bombardments from Gaza in more than a week.
It came a day after Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant said the country's army is expanding military control from northern Gaza towards other parts of the strip.
Hamas has continued to fire rockets at Israel throughout the war, even as Israel says it is dismantling Hamas’s military capabilities in ever-expanding areas of Gaza.
Israeli Channel 12 TV reported that the rockets were launched from the central Gaza town of Bureij.
In the area of Beit Lahia in northern Gaza, Israeli troops located approximately 100 rocket set-installations and 60 ready-to-use rockets, the Israeli army said on Tuesday, claiming its forces killed dozens of militants during the activity.
