NEW YORK: Saudi Arabia on Wednesday strongly condemned Israel’s “unlawful coercive measures” in the occupied West Bank, telling the UN Security Council that the actions amount to an attempt to “assassinate the Palestinian state” and undermine prospects for peace.
Speaking at a ministerial-level council meeting chaired by British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper, Saudi Arabia’s UN Ambassador Abdulaziz Alwasil said Riyadh rejects Israeli moves to expand settlements, seize land and alter the status of the Occupied Territories.
Israeli authorities “continue to gravely violate the rights of the Palestinian people” in the West Bank, he said.
“We meet today, more than two years after the Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip, and at a moment where we also witness a new chapter of suffering and violations committed by the Israeli occupation,” Alwasil added.
Recent coercive measures aimed at imposing “Israeli dominance over the West Bank, expanding settlement activity, escalating settlers terrorism, practicing forced displacement against the Palestinian people and seizing their land … reflects Israel’s persistence in its attempt to assassinate the Palestinian state,” he said.
