Live from Jerusalem, during a press meeting in which he participated DIARIO LAS AMERICAS, Hayat said that 16 years after his nation stopped occupying the Gaza Strip, it has been transformed into the largest terrorist base in the world. “October 7th changed history” with “the largest anti-Semitic attack after the Holocaust.”
“It is a day that marks the before and after in the sense that although we knew who our enemy is and that Hamas is a terrorist organization and that it represents a threat to the State of Israel and Israeli citizens, we never thought that that type of attack so brutal, so monstrous, could occur. “It was the worst anti-Semitic attack since the Holocaust and obviously the worst attack on the State of Israel since the creation of the State in 1948.”valued and indicated that “the terrorists reiterate that their objective is to attack Israel again.”
“Hamas terrorists and other Gazans not directly connected to Hamas infiltrated Israeli territory and murdered, executed and raped more than 1,200 people for the sole reason that they are Jews and that they are Israelis. They are atrocities that human beings cannot accept or understand. More than 350 young people celebrating at the Nova music festival were executed, entire families saw their houses burn and more than 240 people were kidnapped from Israeli territory. There are still 134 of them who are in the Gaza Strip in the hands of Hamas terrorists,” he recalled.
Faced with a scenario of negotiations for a ceasefire in Gaza, the spokesperson considered that Hamas seeks to buy time to reorganize, while making it clear that “the war will not end until the kidnapped people for whom the people are crying out arrive home.” Israeli. In Tel Aviv as in Jerusalem, the streets, squares and prominent public spaces host posters, photographs and objects of worship, as spiritual corners dedicated to the victims.
“We have to know that on the other side there is no government that abides by international standards. We do not have to choose who governs in Gaza, but we are not going to allow them to be terrorists,” he stressed, while asserting that “the Palestinian authority finances terrorists with the international funds it receives. “The Palestinian authority is part of the problem, not the solution.”
A truce is sought
However, Hayat guaranteed, efforts continue to be made for a 40-day truce, which includes the exchange of 40 Israeli hostages for 404 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons.
In parallel, to debate the war in Gaza, the foreign ministers of the 57 Muslim-majority countries that make up the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) met on Tuesday in the Saudi city of Jeddah, from where they warned the countries that maintain “complicity with genocide” in the Strip “These governments need a strong, unambiguous message from all member countries (of the OIC) that complicity in genocide and its double standards will have diplomatic, political and serious economic crises,” said Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riad Al Maliki.
The organization also requested increased funding for the UN Palestinian Refugee Agency (UNRWA). In this sense, Hayat said, Israel “is not against humanitarian aid to Gaza” but rather its use to finance terrorism.
Likewise, one of the great concerns for Israel is the leadership of the Ayatollah regime in the region and its impact on the world. “Iran is a threat to world peace, to the peace and stability of the region and obviously it is a threat to Israel, but it is also a threat to all the moderate countries of the Middle East and it is a global problem, it is not a problem of the State of Israel. The responsibility to deal with the Iranian threat lies with the international community and we believe that the way to do it is through very high pressure at the political, diplomatic and economic level and with a military threat. If Iran does not stop being the root of all terrorism in the Middle East and in the world, it will pay a price for doing so, if there is no international military threat against the terrorist regime of the Ayatollahs, they will not change their policies.”
In the long term, a certainty that Hayat defends is the intention of not returning to October 6, that is, to the circumstances that led to the massacre of October 7.
“We do not want to return to October 6, a day of Jewish holidays, a normal day in the south of Israel, where people who wanted to live and celebrate, while on the other side of the border there was a monster that was waiting for the right moment from its point of view to kill them.
“October 6 is the result of almost 18 years since Israel left the Gaza Strip in 2005, that instead of the Palestinians turning it into a symbol of coexistence and neighborhood with Israel and instead of creating “an economic, health and education system in this area transformed it into the largest terrorist base in the world.”
In a report on global crises addressed to the 47 member states of the Human Rights Council of the United Nations presented on Monday, March 4, the High Commissioner insisted that the international community must do “everything possible” to prevent the Gaza conflict from spreading.
“I am deeply concerned that, in this powder keg, any spark could cause a much larger conflagration,” declared Volker Türk regarding the risks to regional stability, which “are already evident in southern Lebanon,” while, he emphasized, the combatants of militias sympathetic to the Palestinian cause are now involved in an “extremely worrying” increase in hostilities and exchanges of fire with Israel, along the UN-supervised Blue Line that separates the two countries.
In this regard, the spokesman for Israeli diplomacy Lior Hayat assured that Israel does not want to start a new war. “We are still fighting Hamas in the strip and, secondly, it is not our goal to enter a war in Lebanon. There are diplomatic efforts from different countries and with Lebanon to reach an agreement and to promote resolution 17-01 of 2006. And for now it is also the best option for us,” he asserted, without overlooking that “there are around 50,000 displaced people.” “They have not been home for five months (since the attacks) and at some point the State of Israel has to offer them the security of returning to their homes, which is the responsibility of any state.”
During this week, calls by the Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris, for an “immediate ceasefire for at least the next six weeks” to facilitate the release of the Israeli hostages have also emerged.
Negotiation without Israeli representation
International negotiations for a ceasefire took place in Egypt, with American, Qatari and Hamas envoys, but without Israeli representatives.
Although there are issues on which they diverge, Hayat said, “without US support for Israel we could not be in the situation we are now, on the verge of reaching a truce and, hopefully, on the verge of destroying Hamas.
“We greatly appreciate the support of the United States, we have a very intimate and very deep dialogue with the United States on different issues and to reach the objectives of that truce. To this day, the United States supports the right of the State of Israel to defend its citizens and destroy Hamas and is leading efforts to reach a truce that will open the door for the hostages to return home. (…) It would have taken much longer and with much more international criticism,” since, she maintains, the international community maintains a double standard for judging human rights violations.
“The UN has failed to respond to what happened to the human rights of Israelis, until now the UN Security Council, the Human Rights Council and the general assembly have never condemned (violations) of women’s rights and They did not talk about the gender crimes that the Hamas terrorists committed since October 7 with the kidnapped men and women and we know very well what happens there. This March 4 was the first time in five months that an official representative of the UN spoke about the events.”
Instead, the spokesperson maintained, the UN Secretary General’s silence legitimized Hamas’ terrorism and legitimized the attack against Israeli citizens.
