G7 leaders support two-state solution

AFP | Washington                                                     

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

G7 leaders reaffirmed their support for a two-state solution to the long-running Israel-Palestinian conflict in a statement issued after a virtual meeting yesterday.

“We remain committed to a Palestinian state as part of a two-state solution that enables both Israelis and Palestinians to live in a just, lasting, and secure peace,” they said. The statement comes as Israel continues to battle Hamas in Gaza - a situation that has made any broad peace deal between the two sides a distant prospect for the moment.

The latest round of conflict between Israel and Hamas began when the Palestinian group launched an unprecedented attack into southern Israel on October 7, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking around 240 hostages, according to Israeli officials.

In response, Israel vowed to destroy Hamas and has carried out air strikes and a ground offensive that have killed more than 16,200 people, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas government.

Casualties

Yesterday, Israeli forces shot dead three Palestinians, one of them a teenager, in the north of the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said. Abdul Nasser Mustafa Riyahi, 24, died from his wounds after the Israeli army shot him in the head in the Balata refugee camp near Nablus, according to the ministry.

The official Palestinian news agency Wafa said Israeli forces had burst into the camp in the morning and surrounded a house. “Confrontations broke out during which the soldiers opened live fire at the Palestinians injuring four.

One of them later died of his wounds,” it said. Earlier, the health ministry said Israeli troops had killed two Palestinians elsewhere in the West Bank’s north. It said Abdul Rahman Imad Khaled Bani Odeh, 16, and Moath Ibrahim Zahran, 23, were killed by Israeli fire in the village of Tamun and the nearby AlFara refugee camp.

An AFP correspondent in Tamun saw Israeli soldiers enter the village to make arrests and witnessed clashes breaking out with residents. Further south, in the Dheisheh refugee camp near Bethlehem, three Palestinians “were wounded by the bullets of the occupation (Israel), one of them seriously”, the ministry said in a separate statement.

Violence in the West Bank has flared since the outbreak of the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian Authority says Israeli fire and settler attacks in the West Bank, occupied by Israel since 1967, have killed more than 250 Palestinians during the current conflict.