Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Amid the Hamas-Israeli conflict in the Middle East, which has claimed over 6,000 lives and wounded thousands of others since October 7, a veteran Saudi Prince has slammed and advised the Palestinian terror group to learn from India’s Independence Movement.
Prince Turki Al Faizal also revealed that Hamas sabotaged the Saudi attempt to reach a peaceful resolution of the Israel-Palestine row, the media reported.
Saudi Prince Turki Al Faisal, who led the Saudi intelligence agency Al Mukhabarat Al ‘Ammah for 24 years and also served as his country’s ambassador to London and Washington, slammed both Hamas and Israel saying that there are “no heroes in this conflict, only victims.”
The prince’s speech, unusually frank for a senior member of the Saudi royal family, was widely acknowledged as the clearest indicator yet of the Saudi leadership’s thinking on the situation.
Hamas’ acts went against Islamic injunctions not to harm civilians or the desecration of places of worship, he said.
He also slammed Israel equally.
“Israel has overwhelming military superiority and we see in front of our eyes. the devastation and oblivion, it is bringing to the people of Gaza,” he added.
“I categorically condemn Hamas’ targeting of civilian targets of any age or gender, as it is accused of. Such targeting belies Hamas’ claims to an Islamic identity,” the ex-diplomat and spy chief said.
He said the Hamas attack has given “high moral ground to an Israeli government that is universally shunned, even by half of the Israeli public as fascist, miscreant, and abhorrent.”
“I condemn Hamas for giving this awful government the excuse to ethnically cleanse Gaza of its citizens and bombing them to oblivion. I condemn Hamas to further undermining the Palestinian Authority as Israel has been doing,” he said.
“Two wrongs don’t make a right,” he added.
“I condemn Israeli colonists for rampaging through houses of worship in Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. I condemn Israel for destroying Palestinian homes and olive orchids. I condemn Israel for incarcerating Palestinian women, children, and men in concentration camps without recourse to due process,” the Saudi prince said.
Turki Al Faisal’s speech at America’s Rice University in Houston, in which he cited the example of India’s Independence Movement, was shared widely on social media.
Defending the Palestinians’ struggle, he said that all occupied people have a right to resist their occupation.
“I do not support the military option in Palestine. I prefer the other option: civil insurrection and disobedience. It brought down the British Empire in India and the Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe,” he said.
The ex-diplomat and spy chief also accused Israel of “indiscriminate bombing of innocent Palestinian civilians in Gaza” and the “indiscriminate arrest of Palestinian children, women and men in the West Bank.
“Israel has overwhelming military superiority and we see in front of our eyes, the devastation and oblivion, it is bringing to the people of Gaza,” he added.
He also took issue with the US media’s use of the phrase “unprovoked attack” saying, “What more provocation is required than what Israel has done to the Palestinian people for three-quarters of a century?”
“All militarily occupied people have a right to resist occupation”, he said condemning Western politicians for “shedding tears when Israelis are killed by Palestinians,” but refusing to “even express sorrow when Israelis kill Palestinians.”