Qatar calls for protection of Palestinians amid Israeli attacks

By Ahmed Yusuf
DOHA, Qatar (AA) – Qatar has called for providing protection to the Palestinian people and their holy sites amid Israeli violations in occupied East Jerusalem.

Qatar "calls on the international community, especially the Security Council, to assume its responsibilities to protect the Palestinian people and their religious sanctities and to stop the flagrant violations of their rights," Sheikha Alya bint Ahmed Al Thani, Qatar’s permanent delegate to the UN, said in a statement cited by the state news agency QNA during a meeting of the UN Security Council late Monday.

She reiterated Qatar’s condemnation of "assaulting defenseless worshippers, arresting them, and obstructing their performance of their religious rites.”

“Attempts to prejudice the existing historical and legal status of the Islamic and Christian holy sites in occupied East Jerusalem and to Judaize them, to divide the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque temporally and spatially, and to undermine the freedom of Muslim prayer in it, are rejected, null and void, as they contradict international law and United Nations resolutions,” the statement said.

The Qatari delegate went on to affirm her country’s support for the steadfastness of the Palestinians.

“Doha will continue to provide humanitarian assistance for the Palestinian people, especially to improve living conditions in the Gaza Strip, “which is still under the unjust siege,” she added.

Tensions have been running high across the Palestinian territories since the beginning of April amid repeated Israeli arrest campaigns in the occupied West Bank and daily settler incursions into the flashpoint Al-Aqsa Mosque complex in East Jerusalem.

Al-Aqsa Mosque is the world's third-holiest site for Muslims. Jews call the area the "Temple Mount," saying it was the site of two Jewish temples in ancient times.

Israel occupied East Jerusalem, where Al-Aqsa is located, during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. It annexed the entire city in 1980 in a move never recognized by the international community.

*Writing by Mahmoud Barakat