JAKARTA - Israel's plan to evacuate Palestinians from Gaza will be an illegal forced transfer. The evacuation would lead to more violence and would undermine efforts to establish a Palestinian state.
This strong criticism of Israel was conveyed by the foreign ministers of Norway and Iceland on Thursday, May 8.
Both are part of a group of Western European countries - which also includes Ireland, Spain, Slovenia and Luxembourg - which condemned Israel's plans to step up its military operations in Gaza as it seeks to get rid of the militant group Hamas.
Israel's Security Cabinet this week approved plans that may include the occupation of an entire area of 2.3 million people, as well as controls over aid, which has been blocked since March.
"We are concerned and surprised by what we have heard from Israel's security cabinet about plans to step up military operations in Gaza and carry out what they call an evacuation," Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said in an interview.
"This will be the forced transfer of the Palestinian people, first from north to south, and potentially leaving the country. This is clearly against international law. This will undermine expectations for the Palestinian state (and become) a way to more bloodshed," said Eide.
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Meanwhile, Iceland's foreign minister, the first Western European country to recognize Palestine as a country in 2011, said Israel should allow humanitarian aid to enter to help civilians.
"What is most needed right now is the resumption of the ceasefire and unconditional release of all hostages," Thorgerdur Katrin Gunnarsdottir said in the joint phone interview.
The US and Israel have discussed the possibility of Washington leading a temporary postwar government in Gaza.
Norway, which acted as a facilitator in its 1992-1993 negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization that resulted in the Oslo Agreement in 1993, recently supported Arab efforts to carry out postwar plans in Gaza.
Barth Eide says Palestinian rule in Gaza is needed, not Hamas's government, but "the Palestinian government that will be responsible for Gaza and the West Bank".
"The authority they (US) established in Iraq after the Iraqi war, if it can be said, is not universally recognized as a very good idea," he said.
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