President Yoweri Museveni has condemned the targeting of civilians in the ongoing conflict in both Gaza and Israel.
Fighting erupted on Saturday morning when militant groups from the Gaza Strip launched a large-scale armed offensive against Israel, breaking through the Gaza–Israel barrier and forcing entry into Gaza border crossings, nearby Israeli cities, adjacent military installations, and civilian settlements.
In a post on X, Museveni wondered why the two-state solution is yet to be implemented. “The break out of renewed violence in Israel-Palestine is regrettable. Why don’t the two sides implement the two-state solution?”
The two-state solution is a proposed framework for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by establishing two states for two peoples: Israel for the Jewish people and Palestine for the Palestinian people.
In 1993, the Israeli government and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) agreed on a plan to implement a two-state solution as part of the Oslo Accords, leading to the establishment of the Palestinian Authority (PA).
The two-state solution proposed by the Oslo Accords was born out of a series of historical events. After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Jews and Arabs both claimed the right to self-determination in historical Palestine.
A first attempt at partitioning the land in 1948 resulted in an Israeli state but no Palestinian state, and the West Bank and Gaza Strip fell under Jordanian and Egyptian rule, respectively.
In the Six-Day War of 1967, Israel captured and occupied the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and other Arab territories, which in the aftermath led to the idea that Israel would exchange land it had captured for peace with its Arab neighbours, including, eventually, the Palestinians.
Condemns Targeting of Civilians
By Sunday morning, at least 300 people had died, and over 2,000 injured in Gaza and Israel after rockets were fired from Gaza into Israel by Hamas militants, Israeli authorities said.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said 232 are dead and 1,790 others are injured in Gaza.
Many of the victims are reported to be civilians, women, and children. Bodies of Israeli civilians were strewn across the streets of Sderot in southern Israel, near Gaza, surrounded by broken glass. The bodies of a man and woman were sprawled across the front seats of a car.
President Museveni, in his statement, said that targeting civilians is condemnable.
“To be condemned, in particular, is the practice of targeting civilians and non-combatants by the belligerents,” Museveni said.
It should be noted that in the surprise attack, Palestinian militants fired at least 2,200 rockets toward Israel, according to authorities in Israel. Hamas claimed at least 5,000 rockets were fired, all landing in southern and central Israel.
In response to the attack, the Israeli Defence Forces declared “a state of alert for war”. Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: “We will take mighty vengeance for this wicked day.”
“Hamas launched a cruel and wicked war. We will win this war but the price is too heavy to bear,” he said. “Hamas wants to murder us all. This is an enemy that murders mothers and children in their homes, in their beds. An enemy that abducts elderly, children, teenage girls.”
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said the assault that had begun in Gaza, a narrow strip that is home to 2.3 million Palestinians, would spread to the West Bank and Jerusalem. Gazans have lived under an Israeli blockade for 16 years.
In a speech, Haniyeh highlighted threats to Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque, the continuation of the blockade on Gaza and Israeli normalization with countries in the region. “How many times have we warned you that the Palestinian people have been living in refugee camps for 75 years, and you refuse to recognise the rights of our people?”