Bahrain vows solidarity with Palestinian people on 71st Nakba Day

Manama, May 16 (BNA): The Undersecretary of Regional & GCC Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Waheed Mubarak Sayyar, participated in a solidarity meeting with the Palestinian people and their right to return and to self-determination in commemoration of the 71st Nakba Day. The meeting was held at the Palestinian Embassy in Manama. The Ambassador delivered a statement, in which he referred to the support of the Kingdom of Bahrain for the struggle and steadfastness of the brotherly noble Palestinian people, affirming their right to self-determination and return to their territories. He described 1948 as a catastrophic year, not only for the Palestinian people, but also for Arab people who have lived together in pain and great challenges and their wound became even murkier after the aggression of 1967. He said the challenges increased, and the Palestinian brothers became divided between the historic Palestine and the1948 Palestine while some of them remained in the territories occupied in 1967 - the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, and those who were forced to live in exile, in various parts of the world. The Undersecretary of Regional & GCC Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs explained that the Palestinians of the first year of the Nakba and the subsequent catastrophes that followed have suffered a lot from racism and systematic discrimination policies. The atrocities, he added, ranged from denial of their right to self-determination and equality in their homeland to the confiscation of their land and the imposition of strict restrictions on their freedom of movement in Palestine. They eventually became a minority on the land of their ancestors and their brothers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip suffered from the bitterness of the Israeli occupation. They faced repeated aggressions, the spread of settlements on their lands and properties, the theft of their sanctities, the distortion of their history and even their culture and their Palestinian cities. Ambassador Wahid Mubarak Sayyar pointed out that the Nakba should remind the international community of its political, legal and humanitarian responsibilities towards this historical injustice that is still happening to the brotherly Palestinian people due to failure to implement the resolutions of the international legitimacy. He affirmed the Kingdom of Bahrain's full solidarity and support for the Arab nation’s central cause and support for all the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people. These rights, he explained, are their right to self-determination, right to return and to establish their independent and sovereign state on the borders of June 4, 1967 with East Jerusalem as its capital as per the Arab peace initiative, the international law and the relevant resolutions of the international legitimacy, Ambassador Waheed Mubarak Sayyar stressed that the Kingdom of Bahrain would remain supportive of its Palestinian brethren with all its capabilities and at various levels until the Palestinian demands are realized on the ground and the effects of the Nakba, which is now turning its 71st year amid oppression and occupation, would cease.