JEDDAH: The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah bin Abdualaziz said yesterday that world silence over Israeli “war crimes” in the Gaza Strip was “inexcusable” and would only breed more violence in the future.
“We see the blood of our brothers in Palestine being shed in collective massacres that have spared nobody, and in war crimes against humanity,” the Saudi King said in a speech carried by state news agency SPA.
He said it was “all taking place under the eyes and ears of the international community... that has stood indifferently watching events in the whole region.”
“This silence is inexcusable” and will “result in a generation that rejects peace and believes only in violence,” he said.
The conflict that broke out on July 8 has killed nearly 1,500 on the Palestinian side, mostly civilians, and 63 Israeli soldiers and three civilians in the Jewish state.
King Abdullah also lashed out at religious extremism, urging “Muslim leaders and scholars to ... stand up to those trying to hijack Islam and portray it as a religion of hatred, extremism, and terrorism.”
“It is a shame and a disgrace that these terrorists kill, mutilate (dead bodies), and proudly spread (pictures) in the name of
religion,” he said.
His remarks were an apparent reference to Islamic State jihadists operating in Iraq and Syria.
ISIL has declared a “caliphate” in areas it controls in the two Arab states, with their lightning advance in Iraq in June seen as also posing a threat to Saudi Arabia and Jordan.
Saudi Arabia shares an 814-kilometre border with Iraq.
His speech, which focused mainly on what he described as a Middle East-wide threat from Islamist militancy, followed criticism by some Saudis on social media, including prominent clerics, over Riyadh’s quiet response to the Gaza crisis.
The kingdom’s muted response to the crisis so far has been echoed across a region already absorbed by a series of civil wars, insurgencies and internal political strife that have erupted in the aftermath of the 2011 Arab uprisings.
Since the Israeli air and ground onslaught began, Saudi Arabia’s public expressions of condemnation over the violence have been mostly limited to statements following the weekly cabinet meetings, and to pledges of humanitarian aid.
Newspaper coverage has often relegated the conflict to inside pages in sharp contrast to previous Israeli incursions into Gaza.
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