CAIRO, Nov. 11 (Xinhua) -- Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi on Saturday called on the international community to pressure Israel to stop the bloodshed in the Gaza Strip.
Sisi made the remarks during the Arab-Islamic summit held in the Saudi capital Riyadh to discuss the current deadly Israeli attacks on the Palestinian coastal enclave, said the Egyptian presidency in a statement.
"Egypt has repeatedly warned against the consequences of unilateral policies and it warns now that failure to stop the war in Gaza portends the expansion of military confrontations in the region," the Egyptian president told the summit attended by leaders and senior officials of dozens of Arab and Muslim countries, including Palestine, Qatar, Jordan, Türkiye, Iran and Pakistan.
Israel's attacks on Gaza have so far killed more than 11,000 Palestinians, including more than 4,500 children and 3,000 women, and wounded over 27,000 others, said Palestinian Health Minister Mai Al-Kaila in a press conference on Saturday.
The Israeli escalation followed a massive attack launched by the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) that runs Gaza, which killed about 1,200 people in Israel, according to revised figure announced by Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lior Haiat on Saturday. Hamas also took more than 200 people to Gaza as hostages during the attack.
Sisi reiterated Egypt's condemnation of "the targeting, killing and terrorizing of all civilians from both sides." "The policies of collective punishment of the people of Gaza, including the killing, the siege, and the forced displacement are utterly unacceptable," he told the summit.
He urged the international community and the United Nations Security Council to work seriously and decisively to achieve "an immediate and sustainable cease-fire in the strip, with no restrictions or conditions."
Sisi also demanded an end to all practices that displace Palestinians to places outside their land.
The Egyptian president called on the international community to reach "a formula for the settlement of the conflict, based on the two-state solution and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, along the borders of June 4, 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital."
Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979 and has for many years been a key peace mediator in the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict. ■
