Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan will travel to Norway’s capital Oslo on Friday as part of the contact group for Gaza to meet with his counterparts from Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, sources said.
The contact group was formed last month at the extraordinary joint summit of the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). It was assigned to take international action to stop the conflict in Gaza and help achieve lasting peace. It includes officials from Türkiye, Jordan, Qatar, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Nigeria, Palestine and the OIC.
After the U.S. vetoed a United Nations resolution last week backed by almost all other Security Council members and dozens of other nations demanding an immediate humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza, the U.N. General Assembly’s 10th Emergency Special Session on Palestine met on Tuesday on the demand of the Arab and OIC groups, sources told Daily Sabah.
The draft resolution including an “immediate humanitarian cease-fire demand,” which was presented by Egypt in the name of the Arab group and which has 104 co-presenter countries including Türkiye, was accepted with 153 positive votes. Ten countries voted against the resolution while 23 abstained. Israel, the U.S., Austria, Czechia, Guatemala, Liberia, Micronesia, Nauru, Paraguay, Papua New Guinea were countries voting against.
The overwhelming majority supporting the draft shows the stance of the international community shifting against Israel, which continues its attacks on civilians.
Türkiye has played a great role in achieving this result through months of busy diplomacy. Although Ankara condemned Hamas' attack on Israeli civilians, it underlined that the whole Gaza population cannot be punished for the attack while attacks against the civilian population, infrastructure, schools, hospitals and refugee camps are illegal. Fidan has been in contact with his counterparts since the first day of the conflict, seeking a peaceful solution while proposing a guarantorship model to end the wider Israeli-Palestinian problem.
Over the past three weeks, the contact group has held meetings in the U.S., Beijing, Moscow, London, Paris, Barcelona and New York, respectively.
Israel has bombarded the Gaza Strip from the air and land, imposed a siege, and mounted a ground offensive in the wake of a cross-border attack by Hamas on Oct. 7.
At least 18,412 Palestinians have been killed and 50,100 injured in the Israeli onslaught since then, according to Gaza's health authorities.
The Israeli death toll from the Hamas attack stands at 1,200, while around 139 hostages remain in captivity, according to official figures.
