At least 70 people were reported killed in Israel, while Gaza authorities released a death toll of 198 after the Palestinian militant group Hamas launched a large-scale surprise attack against Israel on Saturday.
It is reported that the Hamas military fired thousands of rockets from Gaza and subsequently sent fighters to kill or abduct people as Israel retaliated with devastating air strikes.
EFF said it blames Israel’s apartheid-style occupation of Palestinian land for the current war and violence.
“The continued expansionist policy of the apartheid-Israel state is provocative. The building of settler houses in the land of Palestinian people and further land encroachment is against numerous UN resolutions that apartheid-Israel has flatly defied.
“ The apartheid-Israel government is in perpetual breach of international law against annexation, and as a result, their aggression gives rise to violent resistance,” the EFF said.
Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, Dr Naledi Pandor has called for the cessation of war and violence currently taking place between Israel and Palestine.
In a statement on Saturday, Pandor said she was concerned by the escalation of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
The minister expressed her grave concern over the catastrophic recent escalation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, stressing that the unlawful occupation of Palestinian territory was the root of the present battle.
“The new conflagration has risen from the continued illegal occupation of Palestine land, continued settlement expansion, desecration of the Al Aqsa mosque and Christian holy sites, and ongoing oppression of the Palestinian people,” she said.
The minister said the region is in need of a genuine peace process that will deliver a lasting solution.
“South Africa, working together with international community, seeks to ensure a lasting and durable peace that produces a viable, contiguous Palestinian state, existing side-by-side in peace with Israel, within the 1967 internationally-recognised borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital,” Pandor said in a statement.
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