The minister: “Identity defense has nothing to do with it, Italy firmly condemns the massacre of innocent civilians”
“There are fears of an escalation, but we are working to prevent this from happening. We are supporting all initiatives” to “prevent the conflict from spreading beyond the borders of Israel and Palestine”. Thus the deputy prime minister and foreign minister Antonio Tajani to Rtl 102.5′, underlining: ”L’Italy firmly condemns the aggression against Israel and the massacre of innocent civilians, the taking of innocent civilians hostage. It is a very serious fact that must be condemned”. ”We expressed our solidarity with the people of Israel,” Tajani recalled.
“We work for peace, but this does not mean justifying the violence of those who desecrate corpses. We have seen images of violence never seen in recent history”, a “violence against innocents which is inadmissible”, he said, adding : ”We have seen horrifying scenes.” Stating that ”war is one thing, defending one’s identity is one thing, massacring defenseless civilians is another thing” and ”desecrating the corpses, which have been mortified” Tajani then mentioned the hostages and young victims of the Parthian rave in the Negev desert, ”who were certainly not dangerous attackers of the Palestinian people”.
“We follow the evolution of the situation minute by minute – he continued – There is a lot of tension, we work, together with the USA, France, Germany and Great Britain, so that there is no escalation, without prejudice to Israel’s sacrosanct right to defend itself because it suffered an inhumane attack against the civilian population, not only against the military.”
”We must prepare for difficult moments of great tension”, declared Tajani. ”The level of attention has been increased” and ”we must never lower our guard” to ”protect all possible objectives” , he continued. It is necessary, he added, ”to guarantee the safety of our citizens of the Jewish religion and of Israel’s diplomatic offices in Italy”.
”There are over a thousand Italians under the flag of the United Nations” in the UNIFIL interposition force between Israel and Lebanon who are ”bringers of peace”. This is ”a situation in total evolution” and ”at the moment there is some concern, but there are no signs of mass attacks like those launched by Hamas from Gaza”. However, it is necessary to ”keep the present risks under control” and ”work to defuse the fuses”, he further declared. ”We must not underestimate anything at this moment” and ”we must work with diplomacy”.
“Our embassy in Tel Aviv, the consulate in Jerusalem and the crisis unit are mobilized from the first moment. We are trying to assist all our fellow citizens, we are trying to help repatriate those who want it,” he recalled. “We are committed 24 hours a day to helping them, following them, responding to their requests – he added – The situation is not easy, but we are fully committed”.
”We are favoring everything that can be useful for peace and de escalation”, but ”Hamas does not want any type of dialogue”. Indeed, ”he wants to distance the entire Arab and Muslim world from Israel” and ”ignite the conflict thinking he has the support of Iran” even if ”we have no evidence of Iranian support”.
Source-www.adnkronos.com