Congress leader Sonia Gandhi additionally stated her occasion’s longstanding place has been to assist direct negotiations for a sovereign unbiased, viable, and safe state of Palestine coexisting in peace with Israel.
The Congress is ”strongly opposed” to India’s abstention on the latest UN resolution on the Israel-Hamas battle, former occasion chief Sonia Gandhi stated on Monday, asserting that whereas her occasion had unequivocally condemned Hamas’ assaults, the tragedy is compounded by the Israeli state now targeted on exacting revenge from a inhabitants that’s largely as helpless as it’s innocent.
She additionally stated her occasion’s longstanding place has been to assist direct negotiations for a sovereign unbiased, viable, and safe state of Palestine coexisting in peace with Israel.
In an article in The Hindu, Gandhi stated ”Humanity is on trial now”, as she referred to as for the loudest and strongest voices to be for a cessation of navy exercise.
”We had been collectively diminished by the brutal assaults on Israel. We at the moment are all diminished by Israel’s disproportionate and equally brutal response. How many extra lives have to be taken earlier than our collective conscience is stirred and woke up?” she stated.
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On October 7, 2023, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, Hamas launched a brutal assault on Israel, killing greater than a thousand individuals, principally civilians, and kidnapping over 200 extra, she famous.
”The unprecedented assault was devastating for Israel. The Indian National Congress strongly believes that violence has no place in a good world, and the very subsequent day unequivocally condemned Hamas’s assaults,” she stated.
Gandhi additional stated that this tragedy is, nevertheless, being compounded by the Israeli navy’s ”indiscriminate operations” in and round Gaza which have led to 1000’s of deaths, together with giant numbers of harmless kids, ladies, and males. ”The energy of the Israeli state is now targeted on exacting revenge from a inhabitants that’s largely as helpless as it’s innocent. The damaging would possibly of one of many world’s most potent navy arsenals is being unleashed upon kids, ladies, and males who don’t have any half within the Hamas assault; they, as a substitute, for probably the most half, have been on the coronary heart of a long time of discrimination and struggling,” she stated.
Articulating the Congress’s stand on the Israel-Palestine challenge, she stated there may be no peace with out justice. Israel’s unremitting blockade for over a decade and a half has decreased Gaza to an ”open-air jail” for its two million inhabitants packed into dense cities and refugee camps, she stated. ”In Jerusalem and the West Bank, Israeli settlers backed by the Israeli state have continued to push out Palestinians from their very own land in a seeming effort to destroy the imaginative and prescient of a two-state answer. Peace will come provided that the world, led by nations which have the power to affect insurance policies and occasions, can restart the method of restoring the two-state imaginative and prescient and make it a actuality,” Gandhi harassed.
She stated the Congress has been constant over time in its robust perception that each the Palestinians and Israelis have the precise to dwell in a simply peace. ”We worth our friendship with the individuals of Israel. But this doesn’t imply that we erase from our recollections, the painful historical past of pressured dispossession of the Palestinians from what was their homeland for hundreds of years, and of years of suppression of their fundamental proper to a lifetime of dignity and self-respect,” she stated.
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”Contrary to some mischievous strategies, the place of the Indian National Congress has been long-standing and principled: it’s to assist direct negotiations for a sovereign unbiased, viable and safe state of Palestine coexisting in peace with Israel,” Gandhi stated.
She identified that this was additionally the stand taken by the Ministry of External Affairs on October 12, 2023. ”It is noteworthy that the reiteration of India’s historic place on Palestine got here solely after Israel started its assault on Gaza. The Prime Minister had made no point out of Palestinian rights within the preliminary assertion expressing full solidarity with Israel,” she stated.
”The Indian National Congress is strongly against India’s abstention on the latest United Nations General Assembly Resolution calling for an ‘rapid, sturdy and sustained humanitarian truce resulting in a cessation of hostilities’ between Israeli forces and Hamas in Gaza,” the previous Congress chief stated.
”It is unlucky that many influential nations are being wholly partisan when they need to be attempting their utmost to finish the battle. The loudest and strongest voices ought to be for a cessation of navy exercise,” she asserted. Otherwise, this cycle will proceed and make it tough for anybody within the area to dwell in peace for a very long time to return, Gandhi added.
She identified that in this battle, as it’s now described, whole households have been worn out and neighbourhoods have been decreased to rubble.
Noting that the prospects for the long run are ominous, Gandhi stated senior Israeli officers have spoken of destroying and depopulating giant elements of Gaza. The Israeli Defence Minister has referred to Palestinians as ”human animals”, she stated and added that this ”dehumanising language” is surprising coming from the descendants of those that themselves had been the victims of the Holocaust.
With India abstaining from voting on the United Nations resolution on the Israel-Hamas battle, opposition events on Saturday asserted that the transfer goes in opposition to every thing the nation has stood for, even because the BJP harassed that India won’t ever be on the facet of terrorism.
Over 1,400 individuals had been killed within the unprecedented assaults on Israel by Hamas on October 7. Hamas additionally took greater than 220 individuals hostage. Israel then launched retaliatory strikes. The Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza stated on Saturday that over 7,700 Palestinians have died since October 7.
