19 Mar 2021; MEMO: Saudi Arabia yesterday condemned Israel's continued settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank, while Kuwait called on the United Nations to hold the occupation accountable.
In a speech to the 46th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Saudi's permanent representative Abdulaziz Al-Wasil said: "The seventh item is a major item within the agenda of the Human Rights Council, and the kingdom will never accept the marginalisation of this item."
The seventh item sheds light in detail on the violations of the Israeli occupation in Palestine, and calls for it to be held accountable.
Saudi Arabia expressed its regret at the continued boycott by some countries of Article Seven.
Al-Wasil stressed the importance of the Palestinian cause and defending the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people and adhering to the Arab peace initiative proposed by the kingdom and adopted by the Arab countries in 2002, which affirms the Palestinians' right to an independent state along the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital, the return of refugees, and the withdrawal of the occupation from the Syrian Arab Golan Heights.
He stressed that the kingdom continues to support the Palestinian cause, on all political and economic levels, and "its full support for everything possible to promote and protect human rights in occupied Palestine."
For its part, Kuwait called on the United Nations to activate legal mechanisms to ensure it holds the Israeli occupation accountable for their continuous violations of the rights of the Palestinian people, and to prevent them from impunity.
Kuwait's permanent representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Jamal Al-Ghunaim, said: "The State of Kuwait condemns all flagrant violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law committed by Israel, the occupying power, against the defenceless Palestinian people, and calls on the international community to assume its responsibilities to ensure the principles and provisions of international human rights law and international humanitarian law are respected, which must be applicable to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem.
The Kuwaiti ambassador pointed to the seriousness of the repeated violations committed by the occupying power against the Palestinian people, "many of them war crimes and crimes against humanity, which calls for continuing to discuss the deterioration of the human rights situation in the occupied Arab territories, within the framework of Chapter Seven of Human Rights Council agenda. "
The State of Kuwait expressed regret that "the international community stands idly by in front of the state of Israel's indifference towards international law and United Nations resolutions at a time that requires all states to take deterrent measures against the occupation", to stop its continued crimes against unarmed Palestinian civilians.
