AMMAN — Lower House Speaker Atef Tarawneh on Tuesday said that protecting Jerusalem and Palestinians’ legitimate right to self-determination and statehood is a central, indisputable principle of all Arab parliaments.

 

During the House’s session on Tuesday, Tarawneh said that all participants in the 29th Conference of the Arab Inter-Parliamentary Union (APU) agreed on the meeting’s final statement, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported. The statement called for supporting Palestinians through stopping all forms of normalisation with the Israeli occupation, as stipulated in relevant Arab summits’ resolutions. 

 

Tarawneh, who was selected as president of the union for the next session, also said that “some news outlets have taken the conference’s final statement out of context”, refuting claims of any dispute among the participating parliamentary bodies on any of the outcomes reached, according to Petra.

 

“There might be different opinions in any discussion but safeguarding Jerusalem and Palestinians’ legitimate rights was a central, indisputable principle of all participating parliaments,” Petra reported. 

 

The final statement of the APU conference, which concluded in Amman on Monday, praised the Kingdom’s Hashemite Custodianship of Islamic and Christian holy sites, and His Majesty King Abdullah’s efforts in supporting the Jerusalemites’ resilience.

 

The Amman Declaration, issued at the conclusion of the conference, also warned against the threats of Israeli colonial expansion at the expense of the Palestinian national soil, and rejected all attempts to impose new realities on the Palestinian occupied territories.

 

The declaration added that Jordan will continue to be at the forefront of any effort to support the central cause of Arab and Islamic nations, which is the Palestinian one, and that the Kingdom will not stop exerting any effort that can serve Palestinian interests until the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with full sovereignty over its national soil, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

 

The statement stressed that Jordan, based on its role as the custodian of Islamic and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem, will maintain its responsibility in preserving the Holy City, which is an unaltered stance that the Kingdom will never abandon.

 

Participants at the conference approved a proposal by the Kuwaiti parliament to support efforts aimed at achieving Palestinian reconciliation, and adopted a recommendation to form an Arab parliamentary committee to discuss with Palestinian sides the means of reconciliation and reaching an end to internal disputes.