AMMAN — Senate President Faisal Fayez on Sunday called on the international community to bear its legal and moral responsibilities to support the Palestinian people in establishing a sovereign, independent state on their national soil.

 

In a statement issued on behalf of the Upper House on the 102nd anniversary of the signing of the Balfour Declaration, Fayez said that the international community’s “silence” in light of the war crimes perpetrated against the Palestinian people is a “disgrace”, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

 

The Israeli occupation of Palestine, the longest in the world, is no longer accepted, and the free world must work to expose Israeli practices against Palestinians, pressure Israel to accept the establishment of an independent Palestinian state and implement all relevant international resolutions, the Senate president added. 

 

He also referred to His Majesty King Abdullah’s efforts on all levels in defending Palestinian rights, maintaining the identity of Jerusalem and preserving Islamic and Christian holy sites in the city as part of the Hashemite Custodianship over these sanctuaries. 

 

Signed on November 2, 1917, the Balfour Declaration, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica, is a statement of British support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”. It was made in a letter from Arthur James Balfour, the British foreign secretary, to Lionel Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild (of Tring), a leader of British Jewry.

 

Also commemorating the anniversary, President of the Lower House Palestine Committee MP Yahya Saud called on all relevant regional and international institutions to continue their support to the Palestinians and their just cause, Petra reported.

 

Saud added that this “ominous declaration” has enabled Zionist gangs to practise the most heinous crimes of ethnic cleansing, forcible migration and destruction, noting that the dilemma of Palestinians is repeated every day due to the continuous Israeli practices that aim at Judaising Jerusalem.