Saudi Arabia stands firm in supporting Palestinian cause

Saudi Arabia has renewed its condemnation of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s vow to annex part of the occupied West Bank if he wins elections. The Kingdom also called on the international community to push for a full Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian and Arab territories occupied since 1967. Dr. Abdul Aziz Al-Wasel, Saudi ambassador to the UN in Geneva, told a meeting that Netanyahu’s victory pledge to apply Israeli sovereignty over the Jordan Valley and northern Dead Sea was “a very dangerous escalation” of the situation. Speaking about human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, the envoy described the Israeli premier’s planned move as a “flagrant violation” of the Charter of the UN and the principles of international law and norms.

Al-Wasel affirmed the entitlement of the Palestinians to regain their occupied territories and national rights and noted that Israel’s policy of trying to impose a fait accompli would not succeed “in obliterating the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people.”

He said that Saudi Arabia stood firm in fully supporting the Palestinians and rejecting injustice, and that the Palestinian cause remained one of the Kingdom’s foreign policy priorities. Calling for a complete Israeli withdrawal from territories occupied in 1967, Al-Wasel pointed to his country’s full backing for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state in the occupied territories with East Jerusalem as its capital.