Queen Rania of Jordan told Christiane Amanpour, the chief CNN international anchor, that Muslims are marking Ramadan with “very heavy hearts.”
Israel has cut off “everything that is required to sustain a human life” since the war began, including food, fuel, shelter, medicine and water, said the queen, who has long been a harsh critic of the Jewish state.
“It has left the people of Gaza completely reliant on outside assistance,” she said, accusing Israel of bombing and shooting Gazans trying to get assistance.
“This has been a slow-motion mass murder of children,” she said. “This is an Israeli-made disaster” and “deprivation by design.”
Israel “condemns” peace to death by building “settlements,” the queen said.
“I think the time for trying to persuade Israel to do the right thing has long passed,” she said. She called Israel’s war against the Hamas terror group “one of the greatest historical injustices.”
“This conflict did not begin on Oct. 7,” she said. “It was the result of years of occupation, of settlement expansion, of human-rights abuses, of disregard for international law—and this is what led us to this point.”
The queen also accused Israeli leaders of keeping the Israeli public in a perpetual state of fearing an existential threat “that doesn’t exist.”
“The real solution to the problem is to end the occupation,” she said.
“I would say that as devastating and as traumatic as Oct. 7 was, it doesn’t give Israel license to commit atrocity after atrocity. Israel experienced one Oct. 7. Since then Palestinians have experienced 156 Oct. 7ths,” she added. “They have been going through this every day.”
Oct. 7 was the bloodiest day in Jewish history since the Holocaust.
