Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei denounced Israel’s siege of Gaza on Tuesday as a “genocide.”
The Iranian leader called on the country to immediately halt its indiscriminate bombardment of neighborhoods in Gaza which have killed thousands in the territory.
“If the crimes continue, Muslims will be impatient, resistance forces will be impatient, and nobody will be able to prevent them,” Khamenei said, The Associated Press reported.
“Bombardments should be immediately stopped, Muslim nations are angry,” he added.
The war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza has killed more than 1,000 Israelis and thousands more Palestinians — including at least 1,000 Palestinian children, Al Jazeera reported. Continuous air strikes have leveled entire neighborhoods in Gaza City and displaced more than a million people.
Iran is generally considered Israel’s greatest enemy and has historically funded, trained and supplied opposition military groups, including Hezbollah based in Lebanon. While Iran celebrated Hamas’s attacks on Israel last week, the country has denied any involvement.
Last week, French President Emanuel Macron said there is no evidence Iran directly assisted Hamas.
Criticism against Israel sharpened over the weekend after the Israeli military ordered more than a million Gazans — about half of its population — to evacuate from their homes in the north of the territory and move south amid preparations for an expected ground invasion.
A United Nations human rights expert warned Friday the demand could easily lead to “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians in Gaza.
“The situation in the occupied Palestinian territory and Israel has reached fever pitch,” said Francesca Albanese, U.N. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, according to a press release.
“The international community has the responsibility to prevent and protect populations from atrocity crimes. Accountability for international crimes committed by Israeli occupation forces and Hamas must also be immediately pursued,” she added.
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) echoed those concerns, labeling the expulsion an ethnic cleansing — the harshest criticism from an American politician.
“The mass expulsion of over 1 million people in a day is ethnic cleansing,” Omar said in a social media post Friday.
“Many Palestinians are already wounded, displaced and/or caring for a sick or injured relative, child or senior. They can’t simply pick up and leave,” she continued. “With communications and electricity shut down by Israel, the order cannot be communicated. Roads are bombed and many cars are out of fuel, making fleeing impossible for many.”
While the U.S. has consistently backed Israel since the start of the conflict last week, President Biden slightly tempered his support in recent days amid reports of the Israeli military targeting civilians.
In a “60 Minutes” interview Sunday, Biden said an Israeli military occupation of Gaza would be a “mistake.”
“Look, what happened in Gaza, in my view, is Hamas and the extreme elements of Hamas don’t represent all the Palestinian people. And I think that … it would be a mistake … for Israel to occupy … Gaza again,” Biden said. “But going in but taking out the extremists — the Hezbollah is up north but Hamas down south — is a necessary requirement.”
The president is scheduled to visit Israel on Wednesday.