National, Bold and firm Stance from Bassil at the Islamic summit

 in Turkey

"Either we stand together now or our loss will increase every day" - Lebanese Minister of Foreign Affairs Gebran Bassil

18/5/2018

(This article translated and edited by the ME Times Int'l)

Istanbul: Minister of Foreign Affairs and Emigrants Gebran Bassil delivered the speech of Lebanon at the Extraordinary Summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation held in Istanbul, and stated the following:

Condolences to the people of Palestine, and a great salute to Turkey and its President for his position on Jerusalem and for inviting us.  However, months after our meeting here in December 2017, what have we done? Where are we with that? Jerusalem became further away, and injustice became more deadly. The American carried out his promise after more than 100 years on the implementation of the English promise, and the Israeli in both cases carried out his disgrace.

Why? Because we only release statements on paper and speeches over stages, we did not understand that resistance is the only way to liberate our land and restore our rights and dignity, as did Lebanon, alone among its great brothers.

We did not understand enough that Israel insulted all of us and the international legitimacy and chose the 70th anniversary of the Nakba to open the US Embassy in Jerusalem. It has deliberately attacked us again with a murderous dance and a sense of criminality. They are deliberately killing in front of the eyes of the conspiring international community, with cold blood and explosive bullets, defenseless Palestinian citizens in their backs and on the borders of their land in Gaza.

It is not by chance that Israel chooses such a time and place to deliberately commit a massacre and a war crime that amounts to a crime against humanity by the deliberate murder of peaceful civilians.

Why?

Because it has done so repeatedly. In 2014, Lebanon initiated a complaint to the International Criminal Court (ICC), even though it is not a member of it. No state supported him, justice did not move but the Israeli killing machine moved again.

Yesterday, Lebanon initiated, where no one dared, and filed (in the name of Palestine, Arabs, Muslims, Christians and the free world) a complaint to inform the International Criminal Court after Palestine became a member of it through its prosecutor, Fatu Bensuda, to prosecute war criminals and perpetrators of crimes against humanity. Will anyone dare this time to support Palestine with an actual non-verbal action, or will we continue to grant Israel the innocence of killing our people and stealing our sanctities?

The question is, will the Islamic Conference dare to adopt our complaint or make an international complaint, in many forms, to achieve international justice?

A question raised by this oriental Christian coming from the land of cedars, representing the President of the Republic, General Michel Aoun, the only Christian Levant leader in the Arab nation and the Islamic Conference. We ask that question since we are the sons of a holy land. We have resolved our belonging and our identity and paid the price for our freedom and liberation of our land, "Which gives us the right to say a true word in the Palestinian question.”

Jerusalem is the Holy City, where the prophets walked and the heavenly religions coexisted. It cannot be coloured with one colour, and hijacked by a moment of Arab weakness. The identity cannot be stolen. History cannot be erased. The geography is static and do not move. Jerusalem can be saved and we can save ourselves if we hold together a political uprising. At the very least, if the popular uprising is intensified, it will lead to the cessation of Israel's gnawing policy of stone, a church after church, a mosque after a mosque, an olive tree after an olive tree, a piece of land after another, and of human being, elderly,  young man or child. Yesterday Palestine was raped, today Jerusalem and tomorrow one of your cities.  Either we stand together now, or the loss will increase every day.

We stood together politically and legally, based on the resolutions of the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1947 to the effect that any decision by the State of Israel “to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration on the city of Al-Quds Al-Sharif is illegal, null and void and has no legitimacy at all.”

And the Security Council resolutions (298/1971 and 478/1980) to the effect that "all administrative and legislative measures carried out by Israel in Jerusalem ... are illegal" and to move from Jerusalem suspended or funded and recognized status by some as the capital of the State of Israel to be considered the capital of the State of Palestine.

To complete the legal scene in the status of Jerusalem, through the following decisions of our meeting:

1. Establishment of the State of Palestine on the land of Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital, and the establishment of embassies of our States in Palestine on this basis.

2. Calling upon the General Assembly of the United Nations to consider Palestine as an independent and internationally recognised State within the 1967 borders and the proclamation of Jerusalem as its capital, as well as a decision to stop the construction of the racial separation wall by Israel (in the light of the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice in 2004).

3. To lodge a complaint with the International Court of Justice against the United States of America as a member of the International Court of Justice for recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and declaring this unilateral decision unconstitutional in contravention of international law.

All this, with emphasis on the Arab peace initiative at the Beirut summit in terms of Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine and the right of return as an integral part thereof.

One remaining issue relating to sanctities, Jerusalem is the fountain of life for Christians, and according to Bishop Khodr: "If it’s gone, it will be another killing of Jesus of Nazareth, his blood was poured on this earth from the cross”. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the Tomb of Christ and the Way of the Caliphate are in Jerusalem. The core of our faith, Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third of the two Holy Mosques, for all the Muslims of the world and not only for the people of Palestine, the cradle of the three heavenly religions. It is not a scene for the destruction of two religions and the Judaisation of the Land for the third one.

Thus, Lebanon is the message, entrusted to Jerusalem by its diversity, by virtue of its pluralist human model. It learned through the experience of blood and sorrow, that Israel understands only its logic. Shall we take deterrent measures to be reckoned with and force Israel to retreat, or we are in a permanent retreat towards a disintegrated nation In Islamic-Islamic conflicts which not worthy of the true religion and is destroying us.

If Jerusalem is gone, we all go with it! We chose to stay with it, singing with Fairuz: "For those who were displaced, for children without homes, for those who defended and martyred in the entrances, and peace martyred in the homeland of peace, the right has fallen on the entrances when the city of Jerusalem fell."

"For you, the city of prayer we pray"