Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa attended a hastily organized multinational meeting in Egypt on Saturday focusing on the Israel-Hamas war, with the top Japanese diplomat calling for a redoubling of diplomatic efforts “to prevent the instability from spilling over in the region.”
Kamikawa joined a handful of leaders and officials for the meeting hosted by Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi in Cairo, where she voiced Tokyo’s eagerness to help calm tensions “as soon as possible,” amid ongoing fighting between Hamas militants and the Israeli military.
The Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip has been plunged into a worsening humanitarian crisis following days of Israeli strikes in response to the Oct. 7 lightning assault across the Gaza border into Israel on Oct. 7 by Hamas militants. That assault killed more than 1,400 people, mostly civilians, in the deadliest attack on Israeli soil since the state’s 1948 founding.