Arab League to convene emergency meeting about 'ongoing genocide in Gaza'

The Arab League will be holding an emergency meeting on Wednesday on possible responses to Israel’s “crimes of genocide and starvation” in the Gaza Strip, the 22-member bloc said, Anadolu Agency reports.

The announcement came on Tuesday from Arab League Deputy Secretary-General, Hossam Zaki, who said permanent delegates would convene for the meeting, requested by Palestine, at the League’s headquarters in Cairo, according to the Egyptian official news agency.

On Monday, Palestine’s representative to the Arab League, Muhannad Al Aklouk, said he submitted a request to the League’s General-Secretariat to hold an extraordinary session at the level of permanent delegates “to discuss the Arab movement over the continuation of the crime of genocide, the starvation policy and forced displacement of the Palestinians being committed by the Israeli Occupation in the Gaza Strip”.

Israel has waged a deadly military offensive on the Gaza Strip since a 7 October cross-border attack by Hamas which killed some 1,200 people.

However, since then, it has been revealed by Haaretz that helicopters and tanks of the Israeli army had, in fact, killed many of the 1,139 soldiers and civilians claimed by Israel to have been killed by the Palestinian Resistance.

Over 32,800 Palestinians have since been killed and 75,300 others injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities. Israel has imposed a crippling blockade on the Gaza Strip, leaving its population, particularly residents of northern Gaza, on the verge of starvation.

The Israeli war has pushed 85 per cent of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine, while 60 per cent of the enclave’s infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) which, on Thursday, asked Israel to do more to prevent famine in Gaza.

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