“What is ongoing is eroding the credibility of the international rules-based order,” said Egyptian Foreign Affairs Minister Sameh Shoukry.
A delegation of diplomats from Arab and Islamic nations is calling on the United States to demand a ceasefire in the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
Officials from Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia said the United States’ continued failure to condemn Israeli war crimes was causing many nations to doubt the legitimacy of the rules-based international order.
Egyptian Foreign Affairs Minister Sameh Shoukry said that many worried the United States was shirking its commitment to human rights in Gaza.
“What is ongoing is eroding the credibility of the international rules-based order,” Mr. Shoukry said during a Dec. 8 conference at the Wilson Center think tank in Washington.
“The growing feeling in the global South is that there is a double standard being applied to this conflict in terms of acceptance of the scale of human suffering, the number of innocent casualties.”
To that end, Mr. Shoukry said the United States was “inconsistent” with its handling of Israel’s mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, whereas it had been “clear and determined” when dealing with similar issues from other nations at war.
Israel has killed at least 17,000 people in Gaza since Oct. 7. Israeli defense officials have said that only about a third of those killed were Hamas fighters, with the vast majority being civilians, including women and children.
Mr. Shoukry said that the United States, as a global leader, had not expressed “sufficient condemnation” of that fact.
“Many of our partners only seem to address the issue from a perspective of encouragement, encouraging Israel to respect [human rights] but never defining whether it does so or not,” Mr. Shoukry said.
“We believe that the current situation is untenable. The cessation of hostilities is a must.”
US Could Lead Peace, or Destabilization
Hamas, which is designated a terror group by Israel and the United States, led a brutal attack on Israel on Oct. 7, during which it killed more than 1,200 Israelis, captured hundreds more, and tortured many others.
Israel invaded Gaza in response, beginning the sixth armed conflict between the two powers.
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