FM Szijjártó: ‘Israel has the right to self-defence’

“Any explanation for or relativising” the terrorist attack against Israel “is unacceptable”, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said in New York late on Tuesday.

“There is no excuse for such barbarism,” Szijjártó told an open debate in the United Nations Security Council, adding that “Israel has the right to self-defence, but an escalation of the situation must be prevented.”

The foreign ministry quoted Szijjártó as saying that global security was “in its worst state since the Cold War”, especially “the grave challenges facing Europe”.

Regarding the wars in Ukraine and Israel, “we must speak clearly and nothing must be relativised … there can be no excuse for firing thousands of missiles at a sovereign country, killing a large number of innocent citizens,” Szijjártó said. “It is not only in the interest of Israel but in that of the whole international community that similar attacks should never happen again.”

“Israel has suffered a terrorist attack … what is now going on is a fight against terrorism, and it is in the interest of the whole world that it should be successful,” he said.

Meanwhile, he said, the international community should do everything to avoid an escalation of the conflict, and “the fight against terrorism should be prevented from broadening into a war between countries.”

Szijjártó noted the 2020 Abraham Accords as an agreement pointing towards a lasting peace, but now the terrorist attacks against Israel posed “a great risk of compromising those achievements, and the situation could become as hopeless as before.”

“We count on the Gulf states, Arab countries in the region, which have so far behaved extremely responsibly, not to allow the results of the Abraham Accords to be ruined,” he said.

Szijjártó said the demonstrations in western Europe and in the US held in support of terrorist organisations and celebrating acts of terrorism had been “terrifying”. He expressed concern about an increase in anti-Semitism, which he said was rooted in mass immigration and had “created parallel societies in some countries”. It was “totally inconceivable” that the Hungarian authorities would grant licence for such demonstrations, he added.

He also warned that a potential escalation of the situation in the Middle East would threaten European with “further and dangerous waves of migration.”

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