DOHA – Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani on Tuesday accused Israel of choosing to expand the conflict in the Middle East to implement “pre-existing plans” for the occupied West Bank and Lebanon.
“The easiest and safest way to stop the escalation on the border with Lebanon would have been to stop the war of extermination on Gaza,” Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani told Qatar’s Shura Council.
“But Israel deliberately chose to expand the aggression to implement pre-existing plans in other locations such as the West Bank and Lebanon because it sees that the space is available for that,” he said in his annual address opening the Gulf emirate’s legislative body.
Qatar has played a key role in efforts to secure a ceasefire in Gaza and has called for a truce in Lebanon, where Israel last month intensified operations against the Iran-backed Hezbollah group.
Sheikh Tamim said on Tuesday that Israel had “begun to expand its aggression to Lebanon”.
During the ongoing war in Gaza, which was triggered by Hamas’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel on October 7 last year, violence has also soared in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967.
The Qatari ruler said Israel was “exploiting the opportunity of the international community’s inaction… to implement dangerous settlement plans in the West Bank”.
The October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures, including hostages killed in captivity.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza has killed 42,289 people, the majority civilians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory. The UN has described the figures as reliable.
Sheikh Tamim said that “after all this killing and destruction” in the region, “Israel will have no choice but to comply with what the international community has agreed upon regarding the two-state solution”.
Qatar and its Arab neighbours have repeatedly called for the Palestinian issue to be resolved on the basis a Palestinian state established alongside Israel. – AFP
