Libya tells Western ambassadors to go home

Supporters of Israel should also face an oil and gas embargo, the parliament in Tobruk has said.

Ambassadors of countries supporting Israel should leave Libya “immediately” and an embargo on oil and gas deliveries should be imposed if the “massacres” in Gaza continue, the Libyan parliament said in a statement on Wednesday.

The legislature condemned the “campaign of genocide by Zionist gangs” against Gaza, intended “to kill the Palestinian people and eradicate their legitimate right to resistance and to build their independent state.”

The House of Representatives (HoR, Majlis al-Nuwaab) has criticized the visits to Israel by the leaders of the US, UK, Germany, Italy and France, and demanded that Israel immediately stop its aggression against Gaza, whose population should “under no circumstances” be displaced from the territory.

The Libyan lawmakers also demanded urgent meetings of the Arab League, other Islamic organizations, and the UN General Assembly to address the matter. The current “war of genocide” against Gaza is a failure of the Arab system, the legislators said, as the trend of normalizing relations with Israel has made them unable to make “a bold stand that expresses the will of the people.”

The HoR’s 200 members were last elected in 2014, prior to Libya’s second civil war that partitioned the country between the Libyan National Army (LNA) led by Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar and the Tripoli-based High State Council (HSC). The HoR is currently based in Tobruk, which is controlled by the LNA.

Libya collapsed into civil conflict after the 2011 NATO-backed rebellion ousted its longtime ruler Muammar Gaddafi.

Image credit: Z El Baz