Turkey says Muslim countries must unite against Israel's Gaza takeover plan

Muslim nations must act in unison and rally international opposition against Israel's plan to take control of Gaza City, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said on Saturday after talks in Egypt.

Regional powers Egypt and Turkey both condemned the plan on Friday. Ankara has said it marked a new phase in what it called Israel's genocidal and expansionist policies, while calling for global measures to stop the plan's implementation.

Fidan said the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation had been called to an emergency meeting at a joint press conference in El Alamein with his Egyptian counterpart Badr Abdelatty, after meeting Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi,

Fidan said Israel's policy aimed to force Palestinians out of their lands through hunger and that it aimed to permanently invade Gaza, adding there was no justifiable excuse for nations to continue supporting Israel.

Israel has imposed suffocating restrictions on aid entering Gaza for more than 22 months but insists it is not using starvation as a weapon of war and has blamed Hamas for mass hunger.

Ministers have repeatedly declared ambitions to expel the territory's 2.2 million inhabitants in an act of large-scale ethnic cleansing they refer to as 'voluntary emigration'.

"What is happening today is a very dangerous development... not only for the Palestinian people or neighbouring countries," Abdelatty said, adding that Israel's plans were "inadmissible".

Abdelatty said there was full coordination with Turkey on Gaza, and referred to a statement issued on Saturday by the OIC Ministerial Committee condemning Israel's plan.

The OIC committee said Israel's plan marked "a dangerous and unacceptable escalation, a flagrant violation of international law, and an attempt to entrench the illegal occupation", warning that it would "obliterate any opportunity for peace".

Mediating teams from Egypt, Qatar and the United States have been working for months to reach a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

The OIC urged world powers and the United Nations Security Council to "assume their legal and humanitarian responsibilities and to take urgent action to stop" Israel's Gaza City plan, while ensuring immediate accountability for what it called Israeli violations of international law.

(Reuters and TNA staff)