Saudi Prince: Israel Put Palestinians in Concentration Camps

Manama, MINA – Former Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the United States (US), Prince Turki al-Faisal Al Saud while speaking at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) Manama Dialogue in Bahrain, threw harsh criticism of Israel. Prince Turki said Israel had put Palestinians in concentration camps.

Prince Turki who began his speech saying his comments reflected his personal views, described Israel as the last colonial power of the West in the Middle East.

He said Israel had expelled the Palestinians after the 1948 war.”They were repeating that action after the 1967 war, when more people who survived the 1948 war were both deprived of their land,” he said as reported from Al Arabiya on Sunday.

Israel, he explained, had occupied neighboring Arab lands and not the other way around. He said Arab countries had proposed the “Arab Peace Initiative” since 2002, which all Israeli governments rejected at every turn.

The Saudi diplomats call Israel’s border wall an apartheid wall and say it prevents residents of land they colonized from returning to their stolen property.

“Although the International Court of Justice ruled that the wall is illegal, Israel has imprisoned (Palestinians) in concentration camps under the most fragile security charges, young and old, women and men, who rot there without legal aid for justice,” he said.

“They (Israel) destroy houses as they please and they kill whoever they want,” he continued.

Commenting on the Abrahamic Treaty, or Abraham in Islam, which is the normalization agreement between the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain and Israel, Prince Turki said if the agreement was based on geography, there would be no Abraham Agreement without including Abraham’s land, namely Makkah.

Saudi itself is actually open to normalizing with Israel. However, they insist that any normalization with Israel can only coincide with a lasting peace agreement involving a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (T/RE1)

Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)