AMMAN: Jordan’s King Abdullah rejected any plans by Israel to occupy parts of Gaza or to create security zones within the enclave, saying the root cause of the crisis was Israel’s denial of Palestinians’ “legitimate rights,” state media said on Monday.

In comments he made at the royal palace, the king was quoted as telling senior politicians that there could be “no military or security solution” to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

He said the war-ravaged enclave of Gaza should not be severed by Israel from the other Palestinian Territories.

The king told the politicians that the “root of the crisis was Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories and its denial of Palestinians legitimate rights.”

“The solution starts from there, and any other path is doomed to failure and more of a cycle of violence and destruction,” he said.

King Abdullah said he had long warned about Israeli violations in the West Bank, with which Jordan shares a border, and Jewish settler attacks on Palestinian civilians could “expand the conflict and push the region “to the abyss.”

Jordan is home to a large population of Palestinian refugees and their descendants who fear that Israel could expel Palestinians en masse from the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where Israeli settler attacks on Palestinian inhabitants have surged since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel.

Israel has relentlessly pounded the densely populated Palestinian territory and sent in troops on a mission to destroy Hamas, sparking an escalating humanitarian crisis.

King Abdullah said this month the only path to permanent peace was revived negotiations on an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.

US-brokered negotiations toward a “two-state solution” of Palestinian independence in Israeli-occupied territories have been frozen for almost a decade.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Sunday he opposed an “immediate” cease-fire in the Gaza Strip.

“I don’t think the calls for an immediate cease-fire or long pause — which would amount to the same thing — are right,” Scholz said in a debate organized by the German regional daily Heilbronner Stimme.