Leaders of majority Muslim nations gathered in Istanbul Wednesday and condemned U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel as unlawful. The meeting came as unrest in the Middle East continues, along with growing criticism over the Jerusalem move.
The Lebanese President, Michel Aoun, attended the summit while Minister of Foreign Affairs Gebran Bassil joined the official delegation, after attending the meeting of foreign ministers of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), at 8:30 am. The Lebanese delegation also included the Secretary-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Hani Shmeitli, and the Consul General of Lebanon in Turkey, Mr. Bashir Azzam.
The gathering was under the auspices of the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference, OIC. Turkey currently leads the OIC and the emergency summit was called by Turkish President Erdogan.
President Michel Aoun delivered his speech and called on the international community to recognize Palestine as a state and urged Muslim nations to penalize any state that recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. This is the President’s speech, which read as follows:
I think that Palestine can never become a Jewish state, nor can the Christian and Muslim worlds ever show a willingness to place their holy places in the custody of the Jews.
A Jewish homeland should have been established on a land that is not historically burdened with the legacy of Christianity and Islam …
Your Majesties, Highnesses, Excellencies, and Sovereignty,
I chose to start my words with excerpts from Sigmund Freud’s letter to Haim Kuffler, a member of the Foundation for the Resettlement of the Jews in Palestine, dated February 26, 1930. Freud refuted his reservations about Zionism after Kuffler asked him to participate in its propaganda. The most prominent of these reservations is that the Islamic and Christian worlds will not allow the establishment of a homeland for the Jews on the land of Palestine. Unfortunately, Freud’s predictions were misplaced; some nations have been silenced, others have not acted and others have been accomplices, and Israel has been established on the land of Palestine.
We meet today, at this emergency summit, with Jerusalem as a facade and behind this facade, the crisis in the Middle East that has lasted for hundreds of years, since the declaration of the homeland of Israel by Lord James Balfour supported from Britain. This declaration – promise that was accomplished by the United Nations 30 years later, in 1947, contrary to all conventions and international laws, when it decided to divide Palestine and to sacrifice a people to solve the problem of another people. We say the oppressed become the oppressor in the Middle East.
Israel carried out the worst forms of ethnic cleansing on the land of Palestine, although the Balfour Declaration stipulated non-diminishing to the rights of communities and the paradox is that the Arabs may be the only people who have not participated in the persecution of Jews throughout history, but on the contrary, have lived among them. Since that decision, calamities have followed us and instability hovers over our East.
Israel today acts contrary to the course of history, defying human and societal development, declaring itself a Jewish state, and attempting to emphasize this by Judaizing Jerusalem and making it its capital. This is a removal of the universal identity of the Holy Land, and an explicit cancellation of two divine religions that are God’s messages in which more than half of the world’s population believe, and constitutes a stab to civilization and humanity and will lead to a new displacement, to a new ethnic cleansing, and establish foundations for future wars. Muslims and Christians cannot be imagined without the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Can we imagine Islam and Muslims without the Aqsa Mosque and without Jerusalem, without Bethlehem, without the Church of the Nativity and the Church of the Resurrection? Can we imagine Islam and Muslims without the Aqsa Mosque and the religious sanctuaries of Palestine?
Mr. Trump’s move is a violation of international laws and resolutions, and his action has dropped the United States’ position as a superpower that is capable of finding solutions and establishing peace in the Levant, and if the United Nations does not object and stand in the way of this decision then it has lost its role as a national reference for the resolution of conflicts according to the principles of international law, as described in its charter, and by doing so dismisses the reason for its existence.
Furthermore, and since its establishment, Israel has adopted the principle of force and deprivation of rights and displacement, taking advantage of its veto and the practice of international coddling . The United Nations that divided Palestine has never been able to one day effectively condemn or stop Israel.
The Resolution 181, the Resolution on the Partition of Palestine, issued by the General Assembly of the United Nations on November 29, 1947, considered Jerusalem to have a special international status and to make it a separate entity under international tutelage. Its first objective was “to protect the unique spiritual and religious interests of the city”.
On August 20, 1980, the Security Council passed Resolution 478, in response to the adoption of the “Basic Law” in the Israeli Knesset, which declares the city of Jerusalem the “full and unified” capital of Israel. The resolution called for non-recognition of Israeli law considering it a violation of international law, calling on member states not to recognize it and withdraw their diplomatic missions from the holy city.
In addition, the Security Council resolution 2334 declared on the 23d of December 2016, that it would not recognize any changes in the lines of 4th of June 1967 with regard to Jerusalem.
Add to them all the successive resolutions of the United Nations General Assembly which confirm the need to respect the Security Council resolutions on Jerusalem and to consider Israel’s decision to impose its laws, jurisdiction, and administration on the city of Jerusalem as illegal, in accordance with General Assembly resolution 52/53 of 9 December 1997.
Does a member of the Security Council have the right, individually or in part, to abrogate a decision taken by that Council alone? Will the Security Council accept the breaking of its resolutions and imposing them on members? And does this not constitute a cancellation of its existence?
So what has changed today for the United States of America to make such a decision exceeding international law and going beyond the United Nations, and ignoring the rights and feelings of Muslims and Christians around the world, and the repercussions that can follow from this decision?
The events that have plagued the Arab and Islamic worlds in recent years and the prevailing state of stumbling and confusion have broken relations between some brotherly and friendly countries. They have created psychological barriers, deepened divisions and gaps, lost the spirit of solidarity and transformed the Arab-Israeli and Islamic-Israeli conflict into Arab – Arab, and Islamic – Islamic, by feeding the sectarian conflict between Sunnis and Shiites, and it is not in vain that one of our most important Arab examples is “divide and conquer”.
I have sensed the seriousness of the situation since day one, and have actually called for resorting to dialogue during the Arab summit; Israel is the only beneficiary of this new and unfortunate reality.
Now the solution is imposed. Will we stand up in the last round?
Will Jerusalem be able to unite us again so we can save our history, our people, and our heritage? Or will we fall and drag down with us Jerusalem and let Palestine be lost forever?
Only unified decision and measures can benefit our cause and we must adhere to the Arab initiative for peace, so a practical approach to the solution must be based on:
1- Muslim nations should file an urgent complaint with the Security Council and the U.N. in the name of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in order to block the United States’ decision and force the U.S. to annul it.
2- A diplomatic campaign should be launched to increase the number of states that recognize Palestine as a state ahead of granting it full U.N. membership while taking the necessary legal, political and diplomatic measures to recognize east Jerusalem as its capital.
3- The need for unified, gradual, diplomatic and economic punitive measures against any country that tends to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
4- Peoples of our countries to act locally and around the world to form a popular force that supports our political and diplomatic pressure.
5- The need to adhere to the Arab initiative for peace in its totality, and to push it forward with the help of a trustworthy ally.
Our goal remains peace, but there is no peace without justice and no justice without respect for rights. In conclusion, I would like to thank His Excellency President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for his initiative in calling for this extraordinary summit which is commensurate with the accuracy and importance of the event. ”
After General Aoun concluded, the hall erupted in applause. The speech had positively impacted the leaders many of whom supported it as well.
Translation Hala Hayek Najjar
