NEW YORK, (ST) -A Western-regional alliance comprising Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Israel and some Western countries plans to replace the Arab-Israeli conflict with an-Islamic-Islamic conflict so as to give up the Palestinian cause, stressed Syria’s Permanent Representative at the United Nations Bashar al-Jaafari.
In a statement he made yesterday at a Security Council session dedicated to discuss the Middle East situation, al-Jaafari referred to the blatant Israeli violations of UN resolutions relating to the Israeli occupation of the Arab territories.
“Israel has for a long time been occupying Arab lands in Palestine, Syria and Lebanon, yet no one in the international community has moved to end this occupation,” Al-Jaafari said.
He pointed out that Israel has been committing war crimes and crimes against humanity, pressing ahead with expanding its settlement building plans and giving no heed to all the UN resolutions regarding its occupation of Arab territories, but not a single practical international procedure was taken to punish or hold Israel accountable for these crimes.
Al-Jaafari went on to say that Israel has arrested more than 800 thousand Palestinians since 1967,including 9 thousand kids, but no serious international call to release those prisoners was made. It has also introduced nuclear weapon to the Middle East and blocked establishing a nuclear weapon-free zone in the region, yet no international pressure was put on Israel to give up its dangerous and threatening nuclear program and join the Nuclear No-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
He affirmed that some influential countries at the UN Security Council are trying to hide these facts or divert the world attention from the Israeli crimes.
“But how can we answer those who ask about the UN political, economic and even humanitarian failure to shoulder its responsibility as regards ending the Israeli occupation of the Arab lands?” Syria’s UN Permanent Representative wondered, stressing that all have the right to know whether this failure is intentional or it is the result of UN disability and subordination or maybe the result of some countries’ collusion.
“If this is not the case, so what are the United Nations and member countries waiting for. Isn’t the 65 years old unprecedented Palestinian tragedy enough to awaken the international organization’s conscience so as to adopt serious procedures that ease the Palestinian people’s suffering and help them restore their legitimate rights?” Al-Jaafari asked.
He wondered what the United Nations would say to the Syrian citizens who have been under the Israeli occupation of the Syrian Golan for more than 45 years because the UN failed to take tangible procedures against Israel to force it to implement related UN resolutions particularly resolution No. 497.
“How can we answer those who ask about the absence of international efforts to halt Israeli settlement building activities in the occupied Syrian Golan and to put an end to Israel’s discrimination and racist policies against the people there,” he also asked.
Al-Jaafari said that the Israeli occupation authorities provide logistic assistance to the armed terrorist groups in the disengagement zone in Golan, through admitting injured terrorists to the Israeli hospitals to betreated and then to be sent to the Syrian lands.
“By assisting the terrorists, Israel is not only violating international laws, but also exposes the lives of UN Truce Supervision Organization and the UN Disengagement Observer Force members to danger,” al-Jaafari said, referring to the incident of kidnapping 21 peacekeeping members by terrorists last March.
Al-Jaafari added that some countries are supporting, sheltering and arming terrorists, encouraging extremism in Syria and trying to foil every peaceful solution to the crisis in the country. He stressed that there is an unannounced alliance comprising Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Israel and some Western countries, including UNSC members, that aims at replacing the Arab-Israeli conflict with an Islamic-Islamic conflict in order to give up the Palestinian cause and undermine the two-state solution.
“Saudi Arabia and Qatar had disseminated the takfiri, Salafi and Wahhabi terrorism and had distorted Islam’s tolerance. These policies claim the lives of tens of thousands of young Moslems in the world through implicating them in terrorism, arming, training and funding them under the pretext of what is called “jihad” in Syria and in other parts of the world,” al-Jaafari concluded.
H. Mustafa