Saudi Arabia voiced its rejection of Israel’s “Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People,” saying it seeks ethnic cleansing against Palestinians and defies international conventions.
Denouncing the bill, the Kingdom said it is illegitimate and an extension for Israel’s history as colonial settler force.
Zuhair Al-Idrissi, Saudi Arabia's Permanent Representative to the Organization of Islamic Countries, relayed the Kingdom’s condemnation of the bill in his address at an extraordinary session summoned by Saudi Arabia to discuss the matter at the Islamic body’s headquarters in Jeddah.
“It is a new aggression against the Palestinians and a flagrant challenge to the will of the international community, its laws and its legitimate resolutions. It is racist and illegitimate law because it ignores the historical rights of the Palestinian people and represents an extension of the colonial legacy of the Israeli occupation authority,” Idrissi said.
“The bill abolishes all that is unrelated to Judaism and validates racial discrimination against aboriginal Palestinians,” Idrissi said in his speech.
He went on saying that the law will also strip Palestinians of their unalienable rights granted to them by international conventions and undermine any peace processes.
At the end of the session, a communique reasserted the OIC member states resolute condemnation of the Israeli bill.
“Enshrining Israeli colonialism in law and upholding it as a national value is merely a means to abolish Arab identity and the Arabic language among Palestinians living in Israel,” read the OIC statement.
“It justifies ethnic cleansing and denies an entire people their existence, history, identity and rights.”
Permanent members of the committee discussed the impact of the bill, which aims to reinforce Israeli settlement ideology and strengthen occupation policies, on the political and historical rights of the Palestinian people.
“These racist laws practiced by Israel, the occupying power, will only further legitimize injustice, aggression and violations, making Palestinian rights an international humanitarian responsibility more than ever before,” said Yousef Al-Othaimeen, OIC secretary-general.
OIC member states, in the group’s communique, invited relevant international community institutions, including the United Nations, the international courts and parliaments, human rights organizations and civil society institutions, to reject and criminalize the passing the bill as a “racist act” and demand from to “rescind it and abide by the International Law, the UN Charter and relevant UN resolutions.”
