New Delhi: India has asserted that a solution to the Palestine dispute has to be found and international humanitarian law has to be respected, while reiterating that the Hamas incursion into Israel on October 7 is a “big act of terrorism”.
Speaking at the joint session of the Joint Secretary Session of the Senate’s External Affairs and Defence Commission in Rome, Italy, on Thursday, November 2, external affairs minister S. Jaishankar said that while terrorism was “unacceptable”, a solution had to be also found for the “problems faced by the Palestinian people”.
India’s initial reaction to October 7 – by Prime Minister Narendra Modi – had only been to express “solidarity with Israel”, which Modi then reiterated in a phone call with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu a few days later.
More than 1,400 were killed by Hamas in a massive cross-border assault into southern Israel. In retaliation, Israel bombarded Gaza strip with massive airstrikes, which have killed upwards of 4,000 people, many of whom are children.
Two weeks later, India reaffirmed support for the Palestinian cause and the two-state solution in a phone call between Modi and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas following the explosion at Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza.
India did not back the resolution and abstained during the voting in the UN General Assembly that called for a humanitarian truce in the fighting to allow for essential supplies to reach besieged Gaza civilians. The death toll in Gaza has now increased to over 9000 in three weeks.
India is one of the few countries outside the western bloc which has not used the term ceasefire or humanitarian pause for the current violence in West Asia. It has avoided the term ‘ceasefire’, while saying that the solution has to be found through negotiation.
Similarly, Jaishankar told Italian lawmakers that “what happened on October 7 was a big act of terrorism”.
“This has taken the entire region into a different direction. But surely, it must be everybody’s hope that eventually…the conflict can’t be the normal of the region and that it comes back to some stability, some cooperation,” he said, as per news agency ANI.
Stating that a “balance” has to be found between the two issues, he said, “If there is issue of terrorism, and we all find terrorism unacceptable, we have to stand up. But there is also an issue of Palestine. There has to be solution for the problems faced by the Palestinian people”.
He reiterated that “dialogue and negotiations” are necessary to find a way out of the current crisis.
“Our view is that it has to be a two-state solution. If you have to find a solution, you have to find a solution through dialogue and negotiation. You cannot find a solution through conflict and terrorism. So we would support that as well. Given the current situation…we do believe that humanitarian law must be respected. In any complex situation, it is not wise to not get the balance right,” he added.
International humanitarian law has strict prohibitions against targeting of civilians in a conflict zone.