RAMALLAH, April 11, 2018 (WAFA) – Foreign Minister Riyad Malki Wednesday urged the upcoming Arab summit to keep Palestine top on its agenda saying that the Palestinians will continue to push to keep Palestine as the number one Arab issue.

Malki said in a statement on the summit that Palestine asked to name the summit as the summit to support Jerusalem but that two weeks after this request was made, no answer was given.

“We will work as Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates and in cooperation with our missions at the Arab League and in Riyadh to keep the Palestinian cause as the top Arab cause and the central issue of the Arab League and its member states,” he said, “particularly since some foreign countries, including the United States, are watching how this summit is being run and what it will come out with on Sunday.”

Malki said that that summit is convening in the absence of any real progress on the Palestinian issue. Rather, on the contrary, new developments, mainly from the US administration, has complicated it.

He said, “The Arab summit will convene on the sound of the drums of war over Syria in light of US and European threats to bomb Damascus under the pretext of responding to the allegations of a chemical attack in the Syrian city of Duma, an allegation that has not yet been investigated by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, as if the chemical attack justifies an attack with conventional weapons that would destroy parts of Damascus and kill dozens if not hundreds of innocent Syrian citizens.”

He said that in spite of this, the Foreign Ministry will continue as usual to prepare resolutions on Palestine to be adopted by the Arab summit, “even though we know in advance that unfortunately the majority of these decisions that are adopted by the Arab leaders remain ink on paper and are never implemented or enforced by those countries that adopted them.”

M.K.