Amir to attend Arab-Islamic summit in Riyadh Monday

In line with Qatar's steadfast and continuous support for the Palestinian cause and the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people, His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani will participate in the extraordinary Arab-Islamic summit scheduled to take place Monday in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. His Highness the Amir will be accompanied by an official delegation.

The summit comes in response to the recent surge of Israeli aggression in Palestine and Lebanon, prompting Arab and Islamic leaders to convene and discuss measures to halt the attacks, protect civilians, and support the Palestinian and Lebanese people. The summit aims to unify positions and press the international community to take concrete action to end the ongoing hostilities and secure long-term peace and stability in the region.

Qatar has consistently voiced its commitment to defending the Palestinian people against acts of ethnic cleansing and remains at the forefront of Arab, Islamic, and international efforts to prevent the erasure of the Palestinian cause and the forced displacement of Gaza residents.

In his speech at the 79th session of the UN General Assembly in New York in September, His Highness the Amir emphasised that the aggression faced by the Palestinian people in Gaza is among the most brutal and egregious violations of human values, international covenants, and norms, stressing that this is not a war within the international relations well-known and common concept of war, but rather a crime of genocide by means of using the most sophisticated weapons against a people besieged in a detention camp where there is no escape from the barrage of aerial bombing.

The Amir added, "We oppose violence and the targeting of innocent civilians by any party, but after a year of the war, and with all that has been and is still being perpetrated in it, it is no longer tenable to talk about Israel's right to defend itself in this context without being complicit in justifying the crime.

"It is no longer plausible for any official to claim that he does not know, thanks to the well-known facts and reports issued by international organisations about the bombing of schools and hospitals and weaponising access to food and medicine, in addition to the published and publicly uttered intentions of Israeli leaders. Therefore, the failure to intervene to stop the aggression is a major scandal."

In his speech at the first GCC-EU Summit in Brussels in October, His Highness the Amir stressed that the devastating ongoing war waged by Israel on Palestinian territories and Lebanon, where war crimes have become a horrifying routine amid a lack of international accountability, underscores the urgent need for a comprehensive resolution to the conflict based on a just solution to the Palestinian cause, grounded in international legitimacy resolutions, and should include a full withdrawal from the Arab territories occupied in 1967, with the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, existing alongside the State of Israel.

The Amir called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon, as well as an end to settler provocations backed by the Israeli military in the occupied West Bank.

His Highness praised the role of European nations that have taken a stance against the crimes committed by Israel against civilians and have supported the Palestinian people's right to self-determination and the establishment of an independent state, expressing hope for an even greater European role in fostering international consensus on the two-state solution, transitioning from words to action through a reliable and irreversible path toward establishing an independent Palestinian state on the 1967 borders.

The Arab-Islamic summit in Riyadh Monday builds on the resolutions from the previous summit, held in Riyadh on Nov. 11, 2023. Those resolutions included condemnation of the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip, the war crimes, and the barbaric, savage, and inhuman massacres committed by the colonial occupation government, demanding halting them immediately, and categorically rejecting the characterisation of these retaliatory war as acts of self-defence or justification under any pretext. The summit called for breaking the siege on Gaza, imposing the entry of humanitarian aid convoys, and supporting the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).