Opposition leaders quote Mahatma Gandhi ‘Palestine belongs to Arab…’ in meeting with ambassador

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By Our Special Correspondent

New Delhi, October 16: Fourteen Opposition leaders on Monday called on Palestinian ambassador in India Adnan Abu Alhaija to express solidarity with the people of Palestine and call upon the multilateral institutions to work out modalities to provide immediate humanitarian assistance to the people. The Opposition MPs also submitted a resolution to the ambassador wherein they mentioned the statement of Mahatma Gandhi that “Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same manner as England belongs to English and France belongs to the French”. The delegation of the Opposition leaders consisted of the Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar, JD (U) leader K C Tyagi, the BSP MP Danish Ali, CPI (ML) leader Dipankar Bhattacharya, and others.

The Palestinian ambassador had recently said that India is uniquely positioned to play a crucial role in resolving the Palestine issue. Israel is on the verge of launching a ground attack on Gaza, while enforcing a siege to block provisions of water, food, and other essentials.

The Opposition leaders condemned the “indiscriminate bombing of Gaza by the Israeli forces”. “We express our deep concern regarding the ongoing crisis in Gaza and the suffering of the Palestinian people. We strongly condemn the indiscriminate bombing of Palestinians in Gaza by Israel, which we believe amounts to an attempt to genocide,” added the statement released by the Opposition leaders. They also sought recognition of the Palestinian state as er the 1967 border and in accordance with the UN resolution.

“We strongly believe in the statement of Mahatma Gandhi, ‘Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French’, which reflects his belief in the importance of recognizing the sovereignty and territorial rights of the Palestinian people, just as another nation’s rights to the homeland,” added the statement issued by the Opposition leaders, which also included Jena Srikanth, Shahid Sddiqui, Mohammad Adeeb, Nadeem Khan, Santosh Bhartiya, Subhasini Ali, Muzaffar Shah, and Javed Ali Khan.

Israel launched bombardment of Gaza in the aftermath of the Hamas attacks on October 7 following which several hundreds of the people on both sides of Gaza have been killed. The Arab World is pressing for access to Gaza to provide the humanitarian assistance even while Israel is planning ground attacks on the Hamas.

“Today, parliamentarians and politicians of different parties met Palestinian Ambassador & expressed deep concern for Palestinians people including innocent children being brutally killed in Gaza by Israeli forces. We demand interna’nal community to intervene & stop this madness,” Danish Ali, the Lok Sabha MP of the BSP, posed on X, formerly Twitter. .