BEIRUT, November 23. /TASS/. World countries should not normalize relations with Israel, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has said.

"We should be mere witnesses of the massacre of women and children committed by the Americans and Zionists (Israel - TASS)," the Al Mayadeen television channel quoted him as saying.

"The enemy entity (Israel - TASS) is committing crimes against humanity, which makes the world feel aversion to it," he said and called on world nations "not to seek normalization of relations with this entity."

"The expansion of hostilities will be a logical result of the ongoing aggression against the Gaza Strip. The peoples of the world are losing patience about the scale of [Israel’s] crimes," he said. "Western counties are talking about human rights, but today their declarations sound ridiculous because the whole world knows that they support the Zionist entity."

Tensions flared up again in the Middle East on October 7 after militants from the Gaza Strip-based radical Palestinian group Hamas launched a surprise incursion on Israeli territory, killing many Israeli kibbutz residents living near the Gaza border and abducting more than 200 Israelis, including women, children and the elderly. Hamas described its attack as a response to Israeli authorities’ aggressive actions against the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City. Israel declared a total blockade of the Gaza Strip and launched bombardments of the enclave and some areas in Lebanon and Syria, as well as a ground operation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Clashes are also reported in the West Bank.