World Diplomats Continue to Support Palestinian Resistance Despite U.S. Pressure

ISTANBUL (KI) – Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan Saturday pushed back against mounting U.S. pressure to cut Ankara’s historic ties with Hamas in the wake of the resistance movement’s historic surprise operation on the Zionist regime.

The U.S. Treasury’s top financing official conveyed Washington’s “profound” alarm about Ankara’s past relations with Hamas during a visit to Turkey this week.
Under Secretary Brian Nelson said Washington has not detected any money passing through Turkey to Hamas since the Gaza war broke out eight weeks ago.
But he argued that Ankara had helped Hamas access funding in the past and should now use local laws to clamp down on potential future transfers.
Erdogan said Saturday that Washington was well aware that Turkey does not view Hamas as a terrorist organization.
“First of all, Hamas is a reality of Palestine, it is a political party there and it entered the elections as a political party and won,” he said in remarks released by his office.
“We form our foreign policy in Ankara and design it only according to Turkey’s interests and the expectations of our people,” Erdogan said.
“I am sure that our interlocutors appreciate Turkey’s consistent and balanced foreign policy steps in such humanitarian crises and conflicts.”
Erdogan has been one of the Muslim world’s most vocal critics of Israel’s military tactics in Gaza.
He recalled Ankara’s envoy to Tel Aviv and demanded that the occupying regime’s commanders and political leaders be put on trial for “war crimes” at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
Hamas political leaders have used Istanbul as one of their foreign bases during Erdogan’s two-decade rule.

‘Causing Climate Crisis Through Bombings,
Phosphorus Weapons’

Meanwhile, Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati blamed the Zionist regime for the country’s climate crisis on Saturday, saying the Israeli army’s aggressive use of bombings, particularly phosphorus weapons, has caused irreparable damage to more than 5,000 square meters of agricultural land and forests.
“The serious environmental deterioration in Lebanon is one of the effects of the Israeli aggression underway,” Mikati said at the COP28 UN Climate Change Conference in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates.
“The Israeli use of indiscriminate weapons, such as white phosphorus weapons, causes the irreparable damage of more than 5,000 square meters of agricultural land and forests, which is destroying the livelihoods and revenue sources of our people,” he said.
Amnesty International said on Oct. 31 that the Israeli army fired artillery shells containing white phosphorus, an incendiary weapon, in military operations along Lebanon’s southern border between Oct. 10 and Oct. 16.
Mikati stressed the need “to recognize the disastrous consequences of war on the environment.”