Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi called on Islamic and Arab countries to cooperate in the fight against Israel, which is waging a war sparked by a surprise attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas.
In last weekend’s Hamas attack, hundreds of militants crossed the Israeli border by land, sea and air, killing 1,200 people and taking 150 hostages amid rocket fire.
In addition, Israeli bombings have killed 1,200 people in the Gaza Strip, a Hamas-ruled Palestinian enclave of more than 2.4 million people that is under siege by Israeli forces.
“Today, all Islamic and Arab countries and all free people in the world must achieve serious convergence and cooperation to stop the crimes of the Zionist regime against the oppressed Palestinian nation,” Raisi told his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad during a press conference call Wednesday evening.
Raisi reiterated that Iran will coordinate with Islamic countries “as soon as possible” to stop the “genocide of Palestinians by the Zionists,” according to an announcement posted on the presidency’s website on Thursday.
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Iran, which supports Hamas, welcomed Saturday’s attack on Israel but stressed it had no role in it.
During his conversation with al-Assad, Raisi also criticized Arab countries that have recently normalized relations with Israel or are in negotiations to do so.
“All those who made public their relations with the Zionist regime under the pretext of defending the rights of Palestinians have been discredited and it has been proven to the whole world that the Zionist regime is in its weakest state,” he said Raisi.
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For his part, the Syrian president stressed the “need for rapid action at the Arab and Islamic levels to protect the Palestinian people, especially in the Gaza Strip, and to stop Israeli bombings of children and women.”
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