ISLAMABAD: President Dr. Arif Alvi said on Wednesday the ongoing war in Gaza was an “alarming sign of the apathy of the world,” adding that the modern world needed an approach based on “love, empathy, and forgiveness.”

Israeli warplanes bombarded targets across the densely populated coastal territory on Wednesday in one of the heaviest phases of fighting in the two months since Israel began its military campaign in Gaza in October. Palestinian medics said hospitals were overflowing with the dead and wounded, many of them women and children, and supplies were running out. Hundreds of thousands of displaced people driven out of the north were seeking shelter in the dwindling number of places designated as safe areas by Israel. Gaza’s health ministry has confirmed over 15,800 dead and thousands missing, feared buried beneath the rubble, since the war began.

After largely gaining control of northern Gaza, Israeli troops and tanks pushed further south and encircled Khan Younis in the south after a week-long truce collapsed last week. 

“The civilized world today has forgotten the principles of morality and is witnessing the prevalence of wars waged by powerful against weaker segments,” Alvi said while addressing the inaugural session of the Islamabad Conclave 2023, themed, ‘Pakistan in a Changing World’ organized by the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad (ISSI).

“The situation in Gaza is an alarming sign of the apathy of the world which could not stop the massacre of innocent people including women and children.”

The president regretted that the “gruesome images” coming out of Gaza had failed to “awaken the world’s conscience.”

“The current world urgently requires an approach centered on love, empathy, and forgiveness,” he added.

Pakistan’s Special Representative to Afghanistan, Ambassador Asif Durrani, said the conflict between Hamas, which rules Gaza, and Israel had diverted global attention from war-torn Afghanistan, where over 95 percent of the population was living below the poverty line.

“For instance, humanitarian assistance promised last year was close to $4.2 billion and only one part of that has been committed and has actually been materialized,” Durrani said in his address at the conference.

Yara Mourad, Assistant Director of AUB Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, said the war by Israel had jeopardized growing stability in the Middle East.

“Following the reconciliation between Saudi Arabia and Iran and the establishment of relationships between the Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates with Qatar, this conflict, the most severe since Naqba [1948], has placed the region in greater danger than ever before,” she said.

ISLAMABAD: Caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar has said the country’s former premier Imran Khan does not face legal obstacles to contest the upcoming general elections and is likely to participate in them next year in February.

Khan, who has been in jail since August 5 following a conviction in a case involving the illegal sale of state gifts, faces several other cases which he deems “politically motivated” to exclude him from politics.

While his three-year sentence was suspended by the Islamabad High Court, he remains incarcerated on charges of leaking state secrets by revealing the contents of a confidential diplomatic cable which he says proves US involvement in toppling his administration, a claim consistently refuted by American officials.

Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party alleges a crackdown against its leaders as “pre-poll rigging,” but Kakar, in an exclusive interview with Independent Urdu published Wednesday, dismissed any “state coercion” against political parties.

“His party and up till now, he himself faces no legal restrictions that would keep him from contesting the elections. So, until the schedule is announced or something unforeseen happens which we are not aware of yet, during this conversation, then I can’t say anything. Till today, he is in the position of contesting, and he will contest.”

“There is no legal restriction on him [Khan] or his party that is keeping them away from the political or election process,” the prime minister said. “Until the [election] schedule is announced or something unforeseen happens which we are not aware of at the time of this conversation, then I can’t say anything. Until today, he is in the position of contesting [the polls], and he will contest.”

Khan has been disqualified from holding public office after he was found guilty of corrupt practices in the case in which he was given a three-year sentence. His legal team has appealed the verdict, though the final decision remains pending in the matter.

The former prime minister’s party has also complained about the “disappearance” of its leaders since the violent protests of May 9 when people holding PTI flags targeted government buildings and military installations after Khan was briefly arrested on graft charges.

When asked about the claims, Kakar said these leaders were actually going “underground” on their own to avoid arrests.

Many of them, he added, ultimately decided to quit PTI or politics altogether.

The prime minister described it as their personal decision while pointing out there was no evidence of “state coercion” in all those cases.