New Delhi: Middle East rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia came together to dismiss Israel’s claim of “self-defence” at the extraordinary joint summit of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and the Arab League in Riyadh Saturday.
They also urged the International Criminal Court (ICC) to probe the “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” committed by Israel in Palestine.
The joint Arab-Islamic summit brought together many leaders from the Arab and Islamic world, such as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Iran’s Ebrahim Raisi, Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani and Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, in Riyadh.
This was Raisi’s first visit to Saudi Arabia after both nations restored ties in March in a deal brokered by China.
The emergency summit was convened in response to Israel’s retaliation to the 7 October attacks by the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which resulted in the death of over 11,000 people, of whom more than 40 percent were children, according to health officials in Gaza.
“We express our joint stance in condemning the brutal Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and in the West Bank, including Al-Quds Al-Sharif…We seek to stop and end all Israeli illegal practices that perpetuate the occupation and deprive the Palestinian people of their rights, especially their right to freedom and to have an independent sovereign State on all their national territory,” the joint resolution adopted at the summit read.
The resolution also acknowledged that Palestinians had the right to self-determination and to “live” in their “independent and sovereign state on the borders of 4 June, 1967, with Al-Quds Al-Sharif as its capital”. Al-Quds Al-Sharif refers to the city of Jerusalem.
The resolution’s reference to a two-state solution based on the borders on 4 June 1967, refers to the “green-line” boundary that existed before the start of the Six Day War on 5 June 1967. As ThePrint reported earlier, the green-line boundary was demarcated during the 1949 armistice between the warring parties of Egypt, Syria and Israel at the end of the First Arab-Israel war. At the time, the West Bank was under control of Jordan and Gaza under the control of Egypt. By the end of the 1967 war, Israel was in control of both territories.
While Erdogan called for an international peace conference to find a lasting solution to the Palestinian issue, Raisi blamed the US for enabling Israel to commit atrocities against Palestinians, as reported by the Iranian state-run IRNA news agency.
“The most destructive role is the role of America,” Raisi said during his remarks at the joint summit.
“The killing of millions of people in the world, including in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and other Islamic countries, is under the responsibility of America. America is the instigator of this battle by entertaining the world with contracts, taking effectiveness from all international organisations,” he added.
The OIC is the second largest multilateral organisation after the United Nations, comprising 57 member states from four continents. It was founded in 1959, in the city of Rabat, Morocco. The Arab League, formally the League of Arab States, was formed in 1945 and consists of 22 member states.
On 7 October, Hamas in an unprecedented attack on Israel, killed 1,200 people, injured thousands and captured 239 people. The official number of deaths in Israel was reduced from 1,400 to 1,200 by the Israeli government due to the number of unidentified bodies, according to a Reuters report.
Also Read: What, when, where, why & how of the Israel-Hamas war
Arms exports, nuclear weapons and more
In addition to calling on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate Israel’s actions, the resolution adopted at the emergency summit also appealed to all countries to halt the export of arms and ammunition to Tel Aviv.
“Call on all countries to stop exporting weapons and ammunition to the occupation authorities that are used by their army and terrorist settlers to kill the Palestinian people and destroy their homes, hospitals, schools, mosques, churches and all their capabilities,” said the resolution.
It added that it “fully and absolutely reject, along with collectively opposing, any attempts at individual or mass forced displacement, deportation, or exile of the Palestinian people whether within the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, including Al-Quds (Jerusalem), or outside their territories to any destination, considering it a red line and a war crime”.
The leaders of the OIC and the Arab League also called for the creation of a “nuclear-weapon-free-zone” in the Middle East and the elimination of all other weapons of mass destruction in the region.
The two organisations reiterated their recognition of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and called on all other organisations to “unite under its umbrella”.
Meanwhile, the summit also witnessed some disagreements among the leaders on how to deal with the situation in the Middle East. According to Reuters reports, some countries, led by Algeria, proposed to sever all diplomatic ties with Israel.
However, this suggestion was opposed by other Arab countries that had relations with Israel, arguing that it was important to maintain dialogue with Tel Aviv.
(Edited by Richa Mishra)
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