Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif condemned Israel as a “brutal and rogue apartheid regime” for the killing of defenseless Palestinians in Gaza and called on the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to punish the regime and protect the lives of Palestinians.
“In the light of the massacre in Gaza, the international community has the right to demand an end to the impunity of this brutal and rogue apartheid regime,” Zarif said, addressing an emergency meeting of the OIC about Palestine in Istanbul on Friday, Tasnim News Agency reported.
“It is imperative for our Organization to reinforce the call for bringing the perpetrators to justice,” he said, adding, “We need to take concrete action in the United Nations system, including by pushing for a transparent and independent international inquiry and asking for providing international protection for the Palestinians as envisaged in international humanitarian law.”
Turkey called for an emergency meeting of the OIC after Israeli troops shot dead 60 Palestinians and injured more than 2,700 during protests on the Gaza border against the relocation of the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Beit-ul-Moqaddas on May 14—in the bloodiest day of the conflict since the 2014 Gaza war.
Turkey has been one of the most vocal critics of the US move and the violence in Gaza, with the government declaring three days of mourning for those killed.
Call for International Intervention
A meeting of Muslim leaders in Istanbul will provide a much-needed platform to discuss ways to provide support for the Palestine nation and confront Israel through international channels, according to President Hassan Rouhani.
The summit in Istanbul will give Muslim governments an opportunity to denounce the brutal occupying power and use all available mechanisms to take action against it at the United Nations and other international organizations, Rouhani said in Tehran on Friday before leaving for Turkey to attend the meeting of the 57-member body due to be held later in the day, IRNA reported.
He called the US Embassy move “illegal” under international law, saying, “Today, the United States is more despised than ever in the Muslim world.”
“The Zionists and the Americans undoubtedly intend to deflect Muslim attention away from the issue of Palestine, and to this end, they keep creating problems in the Islamic world,” the president noted, calling on Muslims to put the issue high on their agenda.
Total Impunity
In a phone conversation on Thursday, Rouhani and Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani condemned the US decision and Israeli atrocities against the Palestinians, saying that the OIC meeting provides a chance to discuss the latest developments in the region.
Iran’s UN Ambassador Gholamali Khoshroo said at an open debate of the Security Council on Thursday that the opening of the US Embassy in Beit-ul-Moqaddas (Jerusalem) was a mockery of international law.
“These criminal acts happened with total impunity extended to the Israeli regime by the United States,” IRNA quoted him as saying.
International Concern
The inauguration of the American Embassy, after President Donald Trump outraged the Arab world and stoked international concern by recognizing Beit-ul-Moqaddas as Israel’s capital in December, was hailed by Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Trump opted not to attend the ceremony in which a US consular building was repurposed into an embassy, pending the construction of a new facility, probably years away.
Following in Washington’s footsteps, Guatemala opened an embassy in the city on Wednesday.
The Central American country was one of only a few nations that backed Trump’s decision on Israel’s capital and is only the second country to move its embassy to the holy city. Paraguay said it will follow suit by the end of May.
Saudi Silence Denounced
On Thursday, Zarif rebuked Saudi officials over their support for US sanctions imposed on Lebanon’s resistance movement Hezbollah, and their silence on Israeli crimes in Palestine.
“Israeli snipers shoot over 2,000 unarmed Palestinian protesters in one day. Saudi response on the eve of Ramadan? Collaboration with its US patron to sanction the first force to liberate Arab territory and shatter the myth of Israeli invincibility. Shame upon shame,” Zarif wrote on his official Twitter account, ISNA reported.
The senior diplomat was referring to the sanctions imposed jointly by US and members of the so-called Terrorist Financing and Targeting Center (TFTC), including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
The sanctions target Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and his deputy, Sheikh Naim Qassem, as well as three other officials with the movement, under the pretext of “prolonging the situation in Iraq, Syria and Yemen” and “destabilizing the entire region”.
Prior to Washington’s announcement of new sanctions targeting Hezbollah on Thursday, Saudi Arabia’s minister of state for Persian Gulf affairs declared his approval, dubbing it as an appropriate measure for controlling the resistance movement.
