BRUSSELS, August 4. /TASS/. Israel is losing international support, including from the West, due to actions by its authorities in the Gaza Strip, the country’s former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in a commentary for Politico.
"There’s an ever-widening gap between the appalling atrocities Hamas inflicted on Israelis on Oct. 7 and what we are now inflicting on the Palestinians," he told the media outlet. "We have become a pariah state," Olmert added.
According to the ex-Israeli prime minister, "rage across the world now on the humanitarian issue is spreading rapidly." He added that the Israeli government’s "knee-jerk conflation of antisemitism and any criticism of Israeli war policy 'is a very easy way out for us.'" "We condemn everyone as antisemites," the politician noted, adding that this attitude is wrong and dangerous and risks fueling antisemitism. Politico pointed out that "Olmert himself had previously defended Israel against 'accusations of genocide and war crimes' at the start of the campaign, but his position evolved as Israel’s conduct turned more brutal."
Earlier, US President Donald Trump decided to toughen his rhetoric with regard to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after he saw footage with starving children in the Gaza Strip. On July 18, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz sharply criticized Israel’s actions in the embattled enclave and called the situation there unacceptable.
On July 23, Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, passed a resolution on applying the Jewish state’s sovereignty to the West Bank. Even though this document is of an exclusively declarative nature, 10 Arab and Islamic countries, including Bahrain, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Qatar, Nigeria, the UAE, Palestine, Saudi Arabia and Turkey condemned this move as a blatant violation of international law and UN Security Council resolutions. The Russian Foreign Ministry said that it has a negative view of Israel’s declaration and proceeds from the premise that it would not be implemented.