Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that “there was an opportunity for peace, but we lost this opportunity because of Israel’s intransigence,” adding that he had not lost hope of reaching a permanent peace agreement between Palestine and Israel.

Reuters news agency quoted Turkish media as saying that the Turkish president said that a contact group of Islamic countries is ready to develop a road map to end the conflict in Gaza after talks with Western powers.

The Turkish President noted that “Hamas cannot be excluded from potential solutions to the war in Gaza,” adding that “Hamas is not a terrorist organization and no one should expect him to classify it otherwise.”