Jeddah: Saudi Arabia told Israel on Tuesday that it must reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians if it is to survive as a nation, and criticised Muslims for being divided and failing to stop Israel attacking its Arab neighbours.
“Israel has to realise that peace is the only solution for its survival,” Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al Faisal told a meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the world’s largest Muslim body, on the situation in the Gaza Strip.
“As we see, Israel does not shy away from taking its terror to any level, with total disregard to any laws, rules, religious edicts or humanitarian considerations to achieve its goals.
“Its only objective is to uproot the Palestinian existence wherever it is,” Prince Saud told the meeting in Jeddah, attended by Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah and ministers from the 56-member OIC.
Saudi Arabia has played only a background role in the diplomacy to end the fighting in Gaza, leaving its ally Egypt as the main Arab player pursuing a ceasefire — in its second day on Tuesday.
The kingdom’s policy towards Gaza is complicated by its mistrust of the territory’s ruling Hamas, an Islamist movement with close ideological and political links to the Muslim Brotherhood, which Riyadh regards as a terrorist organisation.
Saudi Arabia believes the Brotherhood has a region-wide agenda to seize power from established governments, including the Al Saud dynasty, and has quarrelled with Qatar over its support for the group.
Efforts to negotiate a permanent peace deal have failed due to differences over the borders of a Palestinian state, the fate of occupied East Jerusalem and the future of displaced Palestinians and their descendants.
Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, say they are willing to make peace with Israel after it withdraws from all lands it occupied in the 1967 Middle East war. Hamas’ founding charter calls for the destruction of Israel, but its leaders have said in recent years it could live peacefully alongside Israel if Palestinians get back land they lost in 1967.
Offering 300 million Saudi riyals (Dh293 million) for medical relief aid, Prince Saud called for support for Egyptian efforts to end the fighting, saying Muslim divisions had allowed Israel to repeatedly launch wars against Muslims.
“Would it have been possible for Israel to carry out an aggression after another, had the Islamic nation been united?” Prince Saud said.
“What tempts Israel to commit its continuous crimes against the Palestinian people and Muslims as a whole is the weakness it sees in the Muslim nation due to fragmentation and divisions and the spread of sedition within it.”
