Turkey urges ‘sanctions’ against Israel over Gaza bloodshed: Minister

Turkey’s foreign minister on Tuesday called for sanctions against Israel, urging the international community to cut support over the conflict in the Middle East.

“We have reached the limit of words, diplomacy and international politics. We must start with sanctions,” Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told ruling party delegates at a meeting about the future of the Palestinian state.

Turkey is a fierce critic of Israel’s now year-long military campaign in Gaza and its recent deadly push into Lebanon, accusing the United Nations of failing to sanction Israel over the conflicts.

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Fidan said Israel so far had not responded to calls to halt the Gaza war, meaning “the international community must now resort to legal action. Israel needs to be boycotted,” he said.

Israel was “not paying any price economically, politically or militarily” for its actions in Gaza, and the only way that would change was if the world “cut off support.”

“If we cannot, Israel will continue the genocide and massacre in Gaza,” he said.

Despite the world’s focus now largely being on Lebanon, where escalating Israeli bombardments have targeted the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia, it was important “not to let the war in Lebanon distract from Gaza” Fidan added.

Last week, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the 12 months of bloodshed in Gaza was “the common shame of all humanity.”

Although some EU states have mooted the idea of economic sanctions against Israel, such proposals have little chance of success within the bloc whose 27 members have been divided over the conflict.

The Gaza war began with Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 that resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

According to the territory’s health ministry, more than 42,300 people have been killed in Gaza since then, mostly civilians. The UN has said the figures are reliable.

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Erdogan has branded Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the “butcher of Gaza” and compared him to Nazi Germany’s Adolf Hitler.

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