Saudi Arabia urges UN to end Palestine-Israel dispute

Israeli left-wing activists of the NGO Peace Now protest in front of a Palestinian house occupied by Israeli settlers in the center of the divided city of Hebron on October 20, 2017. (AFP / HAZEM BADER)

JEDDAH: Saudi Arabia has once again put resolving the Palestinian-Israeli dispute at the top of its foreign policy agenda.
The issue was raised at the UN in New York on Wednesday, at a meeting of the UN General Assembly’s Economic and Financial Committee.
The item on the agenda was the “permanent sovereignty of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and of the Arab population in the occupied Syrian Golan over their natural resources.”
Mohammed bin Issam Khashan, third secretary in Saudi Arabia’s permanent delegation at the UN, said resolving the Palestinian-Israeli dispute by reaching a comprehensive peace agreement based on the Israeli withdrawal from the Occupied Palestinian Territories, the Syrian Arab Golan occupied since 1967 and Lebanese occupied territories would lead to peace and stability across the region.
Saudi officials have consistently maintained that the continuation of the Palestinian crisis has contributed greatly to wider instability in the region and has been exploited by terrorist groups like Daesh and militant groups like Hamas and Hezbollah for their own narrow self interests.