Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has condemned Israel’s actions in Gaza as “genocide” in some of the harshest public criticism of the country by a Saudi official since the start of the war.
Speaking at a summit of Muslim and Arab leaders the prince also criticised Israeli attacks on Lebanon and Iran.
Israel has vehemently denied that its forces are committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
In a sign of improving ties between rivals Riyadh and Tehran, Prince Mohammed also warned Israel against launching attacks on Iranian soil.
Saudi’s de facto leader was joined by other leaders present in calling for a total Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister said it was a “failing of the international community” that the war in Gaza had not been stopped, accusing Israel of causing starvation in the territory.
Prince Faisal Bin Farhan Al-Saud said: "Where the international community primarily has failed is ending the immediate conflict and putting an end to Israel’s aggression.”
MBS has not committed genocide, but every person in this world knows that Israel is committing genocide in GAZA.
It is important to call a genocide a genocide, UN experts told the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People today as they called on all States to examine their relationships and avoid being complicit in this crime being committed by Israel on the Palestinian people in Gaza.
“If you go to a doctor because you have cancer and you are diagnosed with fever, you have a big problem — it’s the same with the people who are being genocided,” said Francesca Albanese, Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territory Occupied Since 1967, during a briefing on the international legal responsibilities for preventing genocide, holding perpetrators of war crimes accountable, and for ending the unlawful occupation of Palestine.
Describing herself as “a reluctant chronicler of genocide,” Ms. Albanese said the international community must recognize what is happening in Gaza as a genocide and “understand the bigger design behind what’s happening in Palestine today”. It is not simply war crimes and crimes against humanity that the Palestinians are experiencing — “they have experienced those through their entire life,” she said, but the current situation is different.
Under the fog of war, Israel has accelerated the forced displacement of the Palestinians that began decades ago, but “what’s happening today is much more severe because of the technology, the weaponry and the impunity”, she added. It is time to consider suspending Israel’s credential as a Member State. Acknowledging that this is a sensitive topic, she said: “None of you really has clean hands when it comes to human rights,” but no other country has maintained an unlawful occupation violating decades of UN resolutions as Israel has done, she said.
Tlaleng Mofokeng, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health, said the Israeli leadership’s promise last year to destroy Gaza has been fulfilled. “The Strip now is a wasteland of rubble and human remains” where survivors struggle to hold on to life and bodies are decomposing in the ruins of what used to be clinics and hospitals. Some 560 attacks have been reported on health facilities, which face shortages of power, medical supplies and personnel — only 36 hospitals remain, and they are partially functioning. Accusing Israel and its allies of “knowingly and intentionally imposing famine and dehydration”, she warned that these practices will stunt an entire generation.