Cairo: The Arab League's General Secretariat announced Monday that the Council of the Arab League at the level of permanent delegates will convene in an emergency meeting on Tuesday to discuss the severity of the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip.
Requested by the State of Palestine on July 17, the emergency meeting aims to discuss political, legal, and diplomatic actions at both the Arab and international levels to confront the Israeli occupation's serious and unprecedented violations.
In a statement, Permanent Representative of the State of Palestine to the Arab League Ambassador Mohannad Aklouk said that the call for an emergency meeting comes in light of the catastrophic conditions in the Gaza Strip and the luring of starving civilians to inhumane aid distribution centers only to be killed there.
Ambassador Aklouk said the occupation is deliberately and systematically starving the Palestinian people, using famine as a weapon of genocide, adding that nearly a thousand Palestinians were targeted while waiting for food aid for their children and families and describing the so-called humanitarian relief as nothing more than a new weapon used to kill Palestinians under a false humanitarian pretext.
He highlighted that this emergency meeting also comes in response to the occupation's targeting of Islamic and Christian holy sites, including an illegal plan to strip the Hebron municipality of its authority over the Ibrahimi Mosque and its surroundings in the Old City of Hebron, transferring it to the religious council of nearby Israeli settlements.
The Permanent Representative of the State of Palestine to the Arab League also pointed to the occupation's attempts to alter the historical, legal, and religious status of the Ibrahimi Mosque in order to complete its Judaization process and fully seize it, in an unprecedented move and a blatant violation of international law and relevant UN resolutions, including those of UNESCO.
Ambassador Aklouk also noted the targeting of the Latin Monastery Church in Gaza, one of the oldest churches in the world and a shelter for hundreds of displaced civilians, which constitutes a crime and a violation of international humanitarian law.
