A group of lawmakers, including members of the Turkish Parliament, walked out of the 149th General Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) in Geneva, Switzerland, in protest of the Israeli delegation’s participation.
Tensions rose during Tuesday's session, chaired by IPU President Tulia Ackson, as emergency proposals were discussed.
The situation escalated when an Israeli official took the floor to speak.
In response, representatives from many countries banged their tables in protest and then walked out of the assembly hall.
Turkish MPs attending the session also joined the protest.
They exited the hall in solidarity with other delegates, chanting "Freedom for Palestine" as they left.
After the Israeli official's speech, the protesting representatives returned to the hall to resume the session.
Israel has mounted a huge air campaign in Lebanon against what it claims are Hezbollah targets since Sept. 23, killing more than 1,500 people and displacing more than a million people.
The aerial campaign is an escalation from a year of cross-border warfare between Israel and Hezbollah since the start of its genocidal offensive on the Gaza Strip, in which Israel has killed nearly 42,400 people, most of them women and children, since a Hamas attack last year.
It expanded the conflict on Oct. 1 by launching an incursion into southern Lebanon.
Israel’s brutal war has drawn international outrage and condemnation, but Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have been platformed in international organizations like IPU and the U.N.
At last month’s U.N. General Assembly, Türkiye’s delegation was again among many nations who walked out in protest when Netanyahu addressed the floor.
In his speech, Netanyahu, for whom International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Karim Khan is seeking an arrest warrant for alleged war crimes, held a map showing the West Bank, internationally recognized as Palestinian territory, as “Israeli” land.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan himself had slammed the U.N. for a "criminal" like Netanyahu to address the global body's general assembly.
Türkiye strongly supports a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, including the establishment of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital.
