GENEVA (Reuters) – Switzerland’s foreign minister said on Friday that Israel had the right to defend itself following a deadly attack by Hamas but said its response should be “proportionate”, at a briefing where he also confirmed the death of a Swiss-Israeli national.
“What we are doing is calling for international humanitarian law to be respected while recognising Israel’s legitimate right to defence,” Ignazio Cassis told a news briefing in response to a question about a possible ground invasion of the Gaza strip.
“They need to find a proportionate response,” he said.
Cassis opened the briefing by announcing the death of a Swiss dual national aged nearly 70 in the violence. He did not give details beyond saying the individual was killed by “terrorists”.
Switzerland, which sometimes acts as a neutral intermediary between parties to a conflict, does not have any contact with Hamas, he said. “It is not the time now for good offices. It is now a time of war,” he said.
He added that Switzerland’s ruling Federal Council, of which he is a member, views Hamas as a “terrorist organisation”. It is currently exploring whether and how to make that legally binding, possibly by banning the group.
(Reporting by Emma Farge and Tomasz Janowski, editing by Rachel More)
