MOSCOW, (PIC)
The Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, said on Sunday that the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s declared goal of destroying the Hamas Movement in the Gaza Strip “is not realistic at all.”
The Russian news agency TASS reported Lavrov’s confirmation that “the destruction of Hamas is an unrealistic task, as it is an existing organization with sufficient capabilities and support, including from the Islamic world.”
Commenting on the incident in the occupied Golan Heights town of Majdal Shams, the Russian Foreign Minister pointed out that Moscow does not yet see any prospects for ending the bloodshed in the Middle East, adding that the Israeli retaliatory measures against the Gaza Strip are unacceptable.
While Lavrov said that Moscow condemns all terrorist attacks, he expressed his surprise at Israeli statements claiming that there are no civilians in Gaza, and that they are all terrorists starting from the age of three.
The Russian minister pointed out that his country opposed the methods chosen by the Israeli leadership to respond to the Al-Aqsa Flood, stressing that the Israeli methods have violated all conceivable standards of international humanitarian law.
Lavrov added, “I felt deeply disturbed when Israel and its leaders began to argue that these methods are fully justified.”
He referred to what he called the double standards of the West regarding the Ukrainian conflict and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, saying that these standards “are now clearly visible.”
Earlier, in mid-December of the past year, the Russian Foreign Minister said that it is unacceptable for Israel to use the Hamas Movement as a pretext to collectively punish the Palestinian people.
Israel is waging a genocide war on Gaza, which has resulted in more than 39,000 martyrs, more than 90,000 wounded, mostly children and women, and 10,000 missing, amid massive destruction of health and educational infrastructure and famine that has claimed the lives of dozens of children, according to United Nations data.
