Saudi crown prince at the Arab-Islamic summit condemns the massacre committed against Palestinian and Lebanese people.
Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has urged Israel to immediately end its military attack on Gaza and Lebanon at the start of a summit of Arab and Muslim leaders in Riyadh.
Speaking to a combined gathering of the Arab League and Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on Monday, the crown prince, known as MBS, denounced the "massacre committed against Palestinian and Lebanese people".
IRAN PRESIDENT
But Iran's first vice president, Mohammad Reza Aref, condemned Israel's assassinations of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders as "organized terrorism" in remarks to the summit.
"The operations that are conceptualized with the deceptive phrasing of 'targeted killing', and during which Palestinian elites and leaders of other countries in the region are killed one by one or en masse, are nothing but lawlessness and organized terrorism," he said.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, and Nigerian President Bola Tinubu were the other key guests attending the summit.
ISRAELI ATTACK ON LEBANON
Speaking in the closing statement on Monday, gathered leaders said they "condemn in the strongest terms" the Israeli army's actions "in the context of the crime of genocide … especially in the northern Gaza Strip during the past weeks," as it cited torture, executions, disappearances and "ethnic cleansing.".
And the declaration criticized the efforts to finally fix Israel's stranglehold on the Israeli-occupied east Jerusalem, known as "the eternal capital" of the Palestinian territories, while calling for the unification of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and east Jerusalem under a Palestinian state.
"We reaffirm the full sovereignty of the State of Palestine over occupied East [Jerusalem], the eternal capital of Palestine, and reject any Israeli decisions or measures aimed at Judaising it and consolidating its colonial occupation of the city," the closing statement of the summit said.
The summit comes a year after a similar gathering in Riyadh of the Cairo-based Arab League and the Jeddah-based OIC, during which leaders condemned Israeli actions in Gaza as "barbaric".
Despite demands that relations with Israel be severed and economic and diplomatic ties cut or its oil supplies be disrupted, no action was agreed on against Israel.
Donald Trump's election to the United States presidency last week – and his upcoming, second term in the White House – are likely to be on leaders' minds in Riyadh, said Anna Jacobs, senior Gulf analyst for the International Crisis Group think tank.
This summit is very much an opportunity for regional leaders to signal to the incoming Trump administration what they want in terms of US engagement," she told the news agency AFP.
"The message will likely be one of dialogue, de-escalation and calling out Israeli military campaigns in the region".
Israel launched its war against Gaza following an unprecedented attack by Hamas against Israel in October last year, killing more than 1,100 people. Israel has since killed more than 43,600 Palestinians, mostly civilians, in Gaza.
Israel has also killed more than 3,100 people in Lebanon since October 7 last year as it battles Iran-backed Hezbollah.
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