Omani FM Urges More Western Pressure on Israel to End Middle East Offensives

London: Sayyid Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi, Foreign Minister said that western powers have a “moral obligation” to constrain Israel to end its offensives in the Middle East.

The minister told the Financial Times, “It’s a moral obligation on these countries to do much more than just a policy of persuasion. There needs to be some kind of a constraint put on Israel to halt its aggression.”

Sayyid Badr said that “the United States and many other countries have tried to persuade Israeli leadership to stop the fighting, achieve a ceasefire, go back to the political process. Unfortunately, we have not seen any effect of that.”

The Foreign Minister argued that western countries should break an “outdated, cold war habit” of unconditional support for Israel. “There are peaceful means of leverage that can be applied by these countries who are the closest friends to Israel,” he said, citing France and the UK’s decisions to limit weapons sales.

Asked about Iran’s use of proxies such as Hizbollah and its support for Hamas, the minister insisted such groups were not the cause of the region’s instability: “We would not have had Hamas in the first place had we addressed the root cause of the crisis, the occupation [by] Israel of Palestinian land, that led to the rise of these national resistance movements everywhere that you call proxies.”

He added that “Treating Iran as a hostile power is really Prime Minister Netanyahu’s agenda. And no other country needs to follow this lead.”

The Foreign Minister concluded his statement, “The only country I see now that wants to continue the war is Israel. And the world is failing to really stop that and to persuade it to stop this madness.”