His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, Crown Prince and Prime Minister, set out a path for an end to the cycle of violence in the ongoing Gaza conflict, by calling for the release of hostages and non-combatants.
HRH Prince Salman’s comments came during his opening keynote address at the 19th edition of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) Regional Security Summit: The Manama Dialogue 2023, which kicked off at the Ritz-Carlton Bahrain last night and is set to run until tomorrow.
He called on both Israel and Hamas to release non-combatants, as steps towards achieving regional security.
“From this stage, I call on Hamas to release the hostages – the women and children that they hold hostage in exchange, and I call on the Israelis to release the women and children they hold in exchange so that we can get some sense (of relief), and a few days, weeks, months or maybe years of peace,” he noted in his speech.
The Crown Prince and Prime Minister said that the intention is “a break in hostilities,” so that “people can take stock, people can bury their dead, people can finally start to grieve, and maybe people can start to ask themselves about the intelligence failure that led to this crisis in the first place.”
In addition to the release of non-combatants, HRH Prince Salman also called for the safe passage of humanitarian aid.
“The second thing that I think is needed is for the role of international law to be fully implemented in the conduct of war – and that is to allow the access of humanitarian aid,” he said.
He stressed the need for medicine, fuel and food to be provided in Gaza to “any facility that is caring for the weak, the young and the sick.”
In his remarks, the Crown Prince and Prime Minister referred to a belief common to both Judaism and Islam that “protection of innocent life is a duty and moral responsibility.”
“In the Quran, it says that the killing of an innocent is akin to killing all of mankind, and in the Abrahamic faith, the saying is, ‘to save a life is to save all of mankind,” he added.
He went on to unequivocally condemn Hamas for its October 7 attack in Israel. He also went on to unequivocally condemn Israel’s “air campaigns that resulted in the death of over 11,000 people in Gaza, 4,700 of which are children.”
“Both of these actions led to the death of innocents, both of these actions did not save the entirety of mankind, and are in effect, the equivalent of killing all of mankind.”
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