Saudi Arabia strongly condemned the continuing aggression of the Israeli occupation against the Gaza Strip in a statement to the 63rd session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, during the general debate on agenda item 7, the human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories.

Delivering the statement for the Kingdom’s Permanent Mission, Dr. Salem Al-Qahtani, Director General of Humanitarian Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, called for the ceasefire to be upheld and civilians fully protected, and strongly condemned the expansion of settlements and settler terrorism. He reiterated the Kingdom’s categorical rejection of any attempt to forcibly displace Palestinians or change the geographic or demographic character of the occupied Palestinian territory.

Al-Qahtani welcomed the important steps by several countries to recognize the State of Palestine and the accountability measures that followed, including restrictions on trade with Israeli settlements.

One year after the New York Declaration was adopted, he restated the position of the co-chairs of the Global Alliance for the Implementation of the Two-State Solution that Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, form a single Palestinian territorial unit and that the occupation must end.

The Kingdom reaffirmed that a just, lasting and comprehensive peace can only come through implementing the two-state solution and supporting the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and to an independent, sovereign state on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.