CAIRO (Reuters) – Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said on Saturday that the international community must avoid an escalation in the war between Israel and Hamas and set a roadmap towards the two states solution.

Meloni made the remarks while speaking in Egypt at the Cairo international summit for peace in the Middle East as Israel prepares a ground assault on Gaza following Hamas attack that killed 1,400 people.

“Although our starting points are far apart, our interests overlap perfectly: that what is happening in Gaza does not become a much wider conflict, a religious war, a clash of civilisations,” Meloni said speaking in Italian.

“I have the impression that this was the real aim of the Hamas attack, not to defend the rights of the Palestinian people, but an attack that would create an unbridgeable gap between the Palestinians and the Israelis, meaning that the target is all of us, and we cannot fall into this trap, which would be very stupid.”

The Italian premier met Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Cairo before travelling to Tel Aviv to meet Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Meloni and Abbas discussed the need to work hard for a de-escalation of the Israel-Hamas war and for a two-state solution, the Italian leader told journalists, referring to the idea of establishing two separate and independent states, one for Israelis and one for Palestinians.

“I hope that there is a responsibility on the part of whole international community, and it seems to me that there is, to speed up this process and provide a structural solution to the conflict,” Meloni said.

She stressed that a two-state solution must have a clear timeframe.

(Reporting by Giselda Vagnoni; Editing by Tomasz Janowski and Alison Williams)

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