Iranian Acting Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Khani and Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan called on Islamic countries to jointly support Palestine and coordinate its policies in this direction. This was stated in a statement by the Iranian Foreign Ministry after a telephone conversation between two diplomats.
“Islamic countries should spare no opportunity to support the Palestinian people,” Bagheri Khani said. He added that cooperation between Muslim countries on the issue of Palestine "creates an important potential to support an oppressed people" The Gaza Strip. According to an Iranian diplomat, the Israeli military operation in the city of Rafah in the southern part of the Palestinian enclave and “obstructing the movement of cars and trucks carrying humanitarian aid to the population of Gaza is another crime”.
The head of Turkish diplomacy “emphasized the need for coordination between Islamic countries on the issue of Palestine”. He supported Iran's proposal to convene an emergency meeting of the foreign ministers of the countries participating in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation on the issue of the conflict in the Gaza Strip and called Tehran's call "very valuable".
The Jewish state, according to Fidan, “blockades the Gaza Strip with the aim of destroying the Palestinian people and must use every opportunity to prevent the continuation of genocide and crimes against humanity".
The situation in the Middle East deteriorated sharply after the infiltration of militants from the radical Palestinian movement Hamas from the Gaza Strip into Israeli territory on October 7, 2023, which was accompanied by the killing of residents of border villages and the taking of more than 240 hostages. In response, Israel launched a military operation in Gaza with the aim of destroying the military-political structure of Hamas and freeing all the abductees. As a result of the Israeli operation, to date the number of those killed in the enclave has reached 36,400, the wounded - 82,600.
On May 7, the Israel Defense Forces announced the start of a military operation in several areas of the city of Rafah in the southern part of the Gaza Strip on the border with Egypt. The city is home to about 1.4 million people who have fled fighting in the northern part of the Palestinian enclave. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant said the operation in Rafah will not stop until the Hamas battalions in the area are destroyed.