Aoun Urges Palestine Recognition, Penalization of States that Accept Jerusalem as Israel Capital
إقرأ هذا الخبر بالعربية
President Michel Aoun on Wednesday 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.
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 oblige the U.S. to annul it,” Aoun told an emergency OIC summit in Istanbul that was called to discuss U.S. leader Donald Trump's controversial recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.
“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,” Aoun added.
The president called on Muslim nations to “take unified and gradual diplomatic and economic punitive measures against any state that might recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.”
He also called for “clinging to the Arab Peace Initiative and all its stipulations” and for finding “an impartial international mediator in order to reactivate it.”
“Otherwise, we should withdraw it,” Aoun went on to say.
The Arab Peace Initiative, also known as the "Saudi Initiative", is a proposal for an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict that was endorsed by the Arab League in 2002 at the Beirut Summit and re-endorsed at the 2007 and 2017 Arab League summits.
The initiative calls for normalizing relations between Arab states and Israel in exchange for a full withdrawal by Israel from the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem, and a "just settlement" of the Palestinian refugee problem based on U.N. Resolution 194.
On the sidelines of the Istanbul summit, Aoun met Wednesday with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Jordanian King Abdullah II, Kuwait Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmed al-Sabah, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Qatar Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad.
