The Congress is “strongly opposed” to India’s abstention on the recent UN resolution on the Israel-Hamas conflict, former party chief Sonia Gandhi said on Monday, asserting that while her party had unequivocally condemned Hamas’ attacks, the tragedy is compounded by the Israeli state now focused on exacting revenge from a population that is largely as helpless as it is blameless.

She also said her party’s longstanding position has been to support direct negotiations for a sovereign independent, viable and secure state of Palestine coexisting in peace with Israel.

In an article in The Hindu, Mrs Gandhi said “humanity is on trial now”, as she called for the loudest and most powerful voices to be for a cessation of military activity.

“We were collectively diminished by the brutal attacks on Israel. We are now all diminished by Israel’s disproportionate and equally brutal response. How many more lives will have to be taken before our collective conscience is stirred and awakened?” she said.

On October 7, 2023, on the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, Hamas launched a brutal attack on Israel, killing more than a thousand people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping over 200 more, she noted.

“The unprecedented attack was devastating for Israel. The Indian National Congress strongly believes that violence has no place in a decent world, and the very next day unequivocally condemned Hamas’s attacks,” she said.

Mrs Gandhi further said that this tragedy is, however, being compounded by the Israeli military’s “indiscriminate operations” in and around Gaza that have led to thousands of deaths, including large numbers of innocent children, women and men.  

“The power of the Israeli state is now focused on exacting revenge from a population that is largely as helpless as it is blameless. The destructive might of one of the world’s most potent military arsenals is being unleashed upon children, women and men who have no part in the Hamas assault; they, instead, for the most part, have been at the heart of decades of discrimination and suffering,” she said.

Articulating the Congress’s stand on the Israel-Palestine issue, she said there can be no peace without justice.  Israel’s unremitting blockade for over a decade and a half has reduced Gaza to an “open-air prison” for its two million inhabitants packed into dense cities and refugee camps, she said. 

“In Jerusalem and the West Bank, Israeli settlers backed by the Israeli state have continued to push out Palestinians from their own land in a seeming effort to destroy the vision of a two-state solution. Peace will come only if the world, led by countries that have the ability to influence policies and events, can restart the process of restoring the two-state vision and make it a reality,” Mrs Gandhi stressed.  

She said the Congress has been consistent over the years in its strong belief that both the Palestinians and Israelis have the right to live in a just peace.  

“We value our friendship with the people of Israel. But this does not mean that we erase from our memories, the painful history of forced dispossession of the Palestinians from what was their homeland for centuries, and of years of suppression of their basic right to a life of dignity and self-respect,” she said.

“Contrary to some mischievous suggestions, the position of the Indian National Congress has been long-standing and principled: it is to support direct negotiations for a sovereign independent, viable and secure state of Palestine coexisting in peace with Israel,” Mrs Gandhi said.

She pointed out that this was also the stand taken by the Ministry of External Affairs on October 12, 2023.  

“It is noteworthy that the reiteration of India’s historic position on Palestine came only after Israel began its assault on Gaza. The Prime Minister had made no mention of Palestinian rights in the initial statement expressing complete solidarity with Israel,” she said.

“The Indian National Congress is strongly opposed to India’s abstention on the recent United Nations General Assembly Resolution calling for an ‘immediate, durable and sustained humanitarian truce leading to a cessation of hostilities’ between Israeli forces and Hamas in Gaza,” the former Congress chief said.

“It is unfortunate that many influential countries are being wholly partisan when they should be trying their utmost to end the war. The loudest and most powerful voices should be for a cessation of military activity,” she asserted.  Otherwise, this cycle will continue and make it difficult for anyone in the region to live in peace for a long time to come, Mrs Gandhi added.

She pointed out that in this war, as it is now described, entire families have been wiped out and neighbourhoods have been reduced to rubble.  “The denial of water, food and electricity is no less than the collective punishment of the Palestinian people. The outside world, particularly those who want to help, is largely blocked out of Gaza, with relief and aid reaching the needy in a trickle, and not on the scale that is necessary,” she said.  

“Not only is it inhumane but it is also illegal in international law. Very few Gazans are untouched by the violence. Bottled up on a small, over-densely populated strip of territory, they have nothing to fall back upon. And now, even the occupied West Bank has flared up and the conflict is widening,” Mrs Gandhi pointed out.

Noting that the prospects for the future are ominous, Gandhi said senior Israeli officials have spoken of destroying and depopulating large parts of Gaza.  

The Israeli Defence Minister has referred to Palestinians as “human animals”, she said and added that this “dehumanising language” is shocking coming from the descendants of those who themselves were the victims of the Holocaust.

“The Israeli government is making a grievous error in equating the actions of Hamas with the Palestinian people,” she asserted.  

In its determination to destroy Hamas, it has unleashed indiscriminate death and destruction against the ordinary people of Gaza, Mrs Gandhi said.  

“Even if the long history of the suffering of the Palestinians is ignored, by what logic can a whole population be held responsible for the actions of a few?” she said in the article.

With India abstaining from voting on the United Nations resolution on the Israel-Hamas conflict, opposition parties on Saturday had asserted that the move goes against everything the country has stood for, even as the BJP stressed that India will never be on the side of terrorism.

Over 1,400 people were killed in the unprecedented attacks on Israel by Hamas on October 7. Hamas also took more than 220 people hostage. Israel then launched retaliatory strikes. The Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza said on Saturday that over 7,700 Palestinians have died since October 7. 

Israel’s military said Monday it had carried out strikes on military infrastructure inside Syria, as fears grow that its war against Hamas could spur broader regional conflict.

“A short time ago, an IDF fighter jet attacked the launchers from which the launches were made last night from Syrian territory towards Israeli territory,” the military said.

The Israeli jet “struck military infrastructure in Syrian territory”, it said.

? In response to launches from Syria toward Israel earlier this Sunday, an IAF aircraft struck military infrastructure in Syrian territory. pic.twitter.com/Tbh06g7NiJ

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) October 29, 2023

The military did not provide more details, but according to Israeli public broadcaster Kan News, the strikes took place near Daraa.

Concerns are growing about the regional fallout from Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza.

There has been a string of attacks on US forces in Iraq and Syria as well as increasing exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and Israeli forces on the Lebanon border since the Gaza conflict began.

Late Sunday, the Israeli military said it was striking “Hezbollah terrorist targets in Lebanon”, also in response to rocket fire.

Cross-border exchanges with Hezbollah have become an almost daily occurrence since October 7, when Hamas operatives from Gaza stormed southern Israel and killed more than 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and seized nearly 240 hostages, according to Israeli officials.

Israel has responded with an unrelenting bombardment of Gaza, which the Hamas-run health ministry says has killed more than 8,000 people, nearly half of them children.

Since the Hamas attack, cross-border violence has killed at least 59 people in Lebanon according to an AFP tally.

Most were Hezbollah fighters, although there have been four civilians among the victims, including one journalist.

Israeli officials have reported four deaths, including one civilian.

Nearly 29,000 people have been displaced in Lebanon due to the clashes, according to the International Organization for Migration.

Chilling details have emerged in connection to the Swiss woman’s murder whose body was found wrapped in a garbage bag in Delhi earlier this month.

Nina Berger was suffocated to death using a plastic bag in a car and not strangled, said sources citing the post-mortem report. Her hands, legs and mouth were tied at that time, and the accused drove pleasure from seeing her in pain, they said.

The accused laughed at her as she desperately tried to free herself, the sources said, adding that she struggled for life for about 30 minutes before dying. “Her eyes protruded and the accused laughed seeing her misery,” they said.

He then dumped her body in the seat adjacent to the driver’s seat and used black sunshades on the car windows – the same that was on the windscreen, the sources added.

The woman’s body was found half covered in a black disposal bag near a government school in Tilak Nagar on October 20.

The police have arrested a man named Gurpreet Singh. He had befriended the woman in Switzerland and wanted to extort money from her, sources said.

Gurpreet used to visit Berger in Switzerland and had suspected her of being in a relationship with another man, police sources had earlier said. He then planned to murder Berger and invited her to India, they had said.

Berger landed in India on October 11 and days later the accused executed his murder plan. He had also bought a car using a fake identity and kept her body in that car until foul smell prompted him to throw the body on the road.

Cops reportedly traced Gurpreet after getting the vehicle’s registration number with the help of the CCTV footage. They seized the car in which the body was kept and another four-wheeler that belonged to Gurpreet.

They also recovered Rs 2.25 crore from the accused’s house.

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