Sent Special Envoy To Israel Seeking To Stop War During Ramadan: PM Modi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi claims that he asked Israel to stop the war on Gaza during the month of Ramadan. In an exclusive interview given to India Today, the PM said that he sent special envoy to Israel conveying to Benjamin Netanyahu not to carry out the bombarding at least during the holy month of Ramadan.

He said while he was being called upon for creating bigotry towards Muslims, he tried to stop the war. The PM also claimed that he did not want to publicise the issue. He further added that some other countries may have tried to speak to Israel to halt the war and may have achieved the results.

PM Modi went on to claim that he did standalone visits to both Israel and Palestine, unlike earlier governments which only displayed a token secularism. The PM said, earlier there was a fashion that if one has to go to Israel, a visit to Palestine is must, “do secularism and come back. But I refused to do it”.

During the interview, the Prime Minister said that, “it was the month of Ramzan. So I sent my special envoy to Israel and asked him to convey and explain to the Prime Minister (Netanyahu) that at least do not carry out bombings in Gaza during Ramzan. They (Israel) made every effort to follow it but in the end, there was a fight for two-three days. Here you keep on cornering me on the Muslims issue but, I didn”t publicise it”.

The interview given to India Today was a rare occurrence where the Prime Minister agreed to do an interview. But reportedly, everything from the questions to camera angles was organised by the Prime Minister”s Office. PM Modi never attended a press conference alone even for once in the past ten years of his tenure. Reportedly, the “last press conference” attended by an Indian Prime Minister was ten years ago on January 3, 2014. Then PM Manmohan Singh hosted more than 100 journalists who threw over 62 questions towards him.