LONDON, Aug 8: Jordan’s King Abdullah expressed his fears about the future of the Middle East amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, in an interview with the BBC on Tuesday.

“Each time we have a crisis it gets far more unstable and the end game or where we’re going to be leading a region is dim,” he told the broadcaster.

“I can’t read the political map of the Middle East anymore because I see all the heavy clouds over our shoulders at this stage.

“I fear for the future of the Middle East.”

The king, after reiterating his calls for an “immediate ceasefire” in the conflict, said that if Arabs and Israelis did not sit down and “declare a new future” for the region, countries in the region “will continually be sucked into the abyss.”

While stating his hopes for a United Nations Security Council resolution bringing an end to the conflict “today as opposed to tomorrow”, the king said: “You can’t destroy Hezbollah”.

Lebanon, which he described as having been “knocked back to the Stone Age”, has been crippled by what is now the fourth week of an Israeli aerial bombing campaign.

The king also said that the longer the conflict continued, the less confident moderate countries would become to “stick their neck out”, and the “more radical” the region would become. —AFP