Egypt and Turkey condemn Israeli plan to take over Gaza City

During their bilateral meeting in Egypt on Saturday, the two foreign ministers were in tune.

Badr Abdelatty, Egypt's foreign minister, called the Israeli scheme to eventually control the entirety of the Gaza Strip an "inadmissible plan".

His Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan chose similar terms: "We need to speak about this openly. Israel's objective is to "de-Palestinize" Gaza. It seeks to transform [Gaza] into [a place] where Palestinians do not live, where it can settle its own permanent settlers."

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had announced in an interview with Fox News on Thursday that Israel would allegedly seek to control the entirety of the Gaza Strip, against which it has been waging a brutal war for almost two years, starting with a first phase in which it would take control of Gaza City.

The Israeli Security Cabinet reportedly approved such a move on Friday, although it stopped short of explicitly saying whether it would comprise a takeover of the entire territory.

During the bilateral meeting in Egypt, Ankara also called for unity between all Muslim nations on the topic of the Israeli war in Gaza.

Meanwhile, Egypt, together with Qatar and the United States, has been among the countries attempting to mediate in the conflict between Israel and Hamas for several months already, but with no durable results.