Abu Dhabi: The UAE has renewed its support for the rights of Palestinian people to self-determination and the establishment of an independent state with occupied Jerusalem as its capital.
In an annual message on the occasion of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, President His Highness Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan urged the international community to strengthen its support politically and provide developmental, economic and relief assistance to the Palestinian people and their national authority to enable them attain freedom, independence and a decent standard of living.
The solidarity day is observed annually on November 29. The message was sent to Ambassador Paul Badji, Chairman of the United Nations' Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People.
Shaikh Khalifa denounced all attacks and serious violations by Israel in the Palestinian territories, challenges to the work of the Palestinian Authority leadership as well as other attempts to strip the peace process of its political content to serve Israel's expansion and consolidation of its occupation and illegal annexation of Palestinian territory.
He called upon the International Community to take urgent steps to bring Israel to stop its aggressive policies against the Palestinian people and to withdraw completely and unconditionally from all the occupied Arab and Palestinian territories.
Shaikh Khalifa said that this year's celebrations came at a critical stage as a result of the continuous occupation of Palestinian land, and Israel's violations of international conventions, humanitarian laws and resolutions.
"[The] UAE expresses its disappointment at the continuing inability of the international community to face all these Israeli practices, which [are] punishable by international law and international humanitarian law under the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949. Accordingly, we hold the United Nations, particularly the Security Council and Member States in the Quartet, responsible for [the] Israeli government persistence to all these crimes against the Palestinian people," he said.
Emergency steps
"We also call [on] them to take all emergency measures, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, to bring the Israeli Government to stop its aggressive policies against the Palestinian people and to withdraw completely and unconditionally from all the Arab and Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, including [occupied] Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan by fully complying with all the legal and moral obligations set forth in the agreements concluded by the resolutions of international legitimacy and human rights protocols," he added.
