File photo: File Photo: Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Abul-Gheit at the 29th Arab Summit in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Reuters
The Arab League formed on Tuesday a seven-member ministerial committee tasked with lobbying permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and other influential states to take steps to halt Israeli aggression in East Jerusalem.
The committee is comprised of ministers from Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, Qatar, and Morocco, as well as the Arab League (AL) secretary-general and the Arab member of the UNSC, the Arab League said in a communique following an extraordinary meeting at the level of foreign ministers in the wake of Israeli assaults in East Jerusalem.
The decision comes in the wake of Israel’s continued attacks on Al-Aqsa mosque, the planned eviction of Arab residents in Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood, and the bombing of Gaza.
Israeli police have injured hundreds of unarmed Palestinians during the crackdown in several parts of East Jerusalem by using rubber bullets and stun grenades.
Israel also launched a bombing campaign in Gaza on Tuesday, named Operation Guardians of the Walls, which has left at least 50 Palestinians dead and dozens more injured.
Israel says its military campaign against Gaza comes in response to rockets fired by Hamas from the strip, which have killed at least five Israelis.
Hamas said it fired rockets against Israeli cities as a retaliatory move over the Israeli assaults against worshippers and protesters in Al-Aqsa.
The Arab League has also urged the International Criminal Court (ICC) to proceed with its planned probe into Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity against unarmed Palestinian people.
These crimes and violations include displacing Palestinian people from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah and other occupied Palestinian territories.
The statement said these acts committed by Israel represent a flagrant violation of the UN resolutions, international law and the international humanitarian law.
The league affirmed that it holds Israel in its capacity as the occupying power responsible for the consequences of its crimes and actions.
The statement said these acts committed by Israel represent a flagrant violation of the UN resolutions, the international law and the international humanitarian law.
The Arab League also calls on the United Nations and the relevant international organisations, including the Security Council, to shoulder their legal, moral and humanitarian responsibilities in this issue.
This includes immediately stopping Israeli aggression, providing security for the Palestinian people, preserving their right to freedom of worship and maintaining security and stability in the region and the world, the statement explained.
The Arab League voiced its full solidarity with the Palestinian people and their resistance in Jerusalem against the “systematic Israeli aggression that aims to Judaize Jerusalem city and distort is Arab identity.”
The Israeli aggression seeks to “displace the Arab people of Palestine, alter the legal and historic status in the city and its Islamic and Christian sanctities, including Al-Aqsa Mosque,” the statement added.
“The league reiterates the centrality of the Palestinian cause to the whole Arab world and that the occupied East Jerusalem city, the capital of the state of Palestine, is an inseparable part of the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967.”
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