ISLAMABAD: Calling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “purveyor of genocide,” Pakistan on Friday warned that any aggression against its sovereignty would be met with full force, hours after the two countries clashed at the United Nations Security Council over Israel’s strike on Qatar earlier this week.
Foreign Office spokesperson Shafqat Ali Khan was responding to journalists’ questions at the weekly press briefing about a recent Israeli airstrike on a residential neighborhood in Doha that killed six people and Netanyahu equating it with the US May 2011 operation in Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden.
In a video message to mark the anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks on Thursday, the Israeli prime minister specifically named Pakistan, saying his country did exactly what America did when it “went after Al Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan, and when they killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.”
Khan reiterated Pakistan’s condemnation of Israel’s Doha attack, pointing out that the “reckless action” was yet another manifestation of Israel’s disregard for international peace and its policy of destabilizing the Middle East.
“We do not respond to statements by the purveyors of genocide,” the foreign office spokesperson said in response to a query on Netanyahu’s comment. “What is happening right now in the Middle East, which is our immediate neighborhood, we follow it very closely.”
