AQABA: In a meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in the Jordanian city of Aqaba, Jordan’s King Abdullah II called for urgent international action to achieve an immediate and permanent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
The king emphasized the importance of intensifying efforts to protect civilians, providing sufficient and sustainable humanitarian aid to Gaza and ensuring its delivery by all possible means.
King Abdullah warned of the deteriorating humanitarian conditions in Gaza, which require intensified efforts to prevent the situation from escalating further.
He also warned against the dangerous repercussions of halting funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), highlighting its impact on Gaza, the West Bank, and Jordan.
The king reiterated Jordan’s rejection of any attempts to forcibly displace Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, as well as any efforts to separate the West Bank from Gaza.
He underscored the need to address the violence committed by ext
remist colonists against Palestinians in the West Bank and the violations against Islamic and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem.
During the meeting, King Abdullah and the German Chancellor also warned of the grave consequences of an Israeli attack on Rafah, which would further exacerbate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
The meeting also touched upon the role of the European Union and its efforts in achieving peace. The King emphasized the necessity of serious and effective actions to create a political horizon for achieving a just and comprehensive peace based on a two-state solution.
Source: Palestine News and Information Agency – WAFA
The Free Patriotic Movement organized its annual general conference in commemoration of March 14th, attended by the Movement Chief, MP Gebran Bassil, its vice-presidents and members of the ‘Strong Lebanon’ parliamentary bloc, alongside a crowd of supporters and cadre members.
Addressing the attendees, Bassil said: ‘Our political work requires a lot of communication with people, from within the Movement and the country and from outside and at all levels.’
He added that ‘this effort corrects the image that was distorted by the media assassination campaigns to which we were subjected…’ He considered that the corruption accusations that FPM has faced were due to its reform approach that exposed those who were actually corrupt and who financed the media to distort FPM’s image.
‘They accused us of sectarianism because we are patriots and our demand for a civil state strikes their sectarianism. They accused us of confrontation because we seek understanding and unison,’ Bassil went on.
He continued to stress, ‘
Our choice is the state and coexistence in full partnership, because the state brings us together and organizes our lives and prevents the disintegration of society and institutions and the destruction of national unity, and from here we propose three components: the state and living together within it, unity and partnership, national sovereignty and a defense strategy.”
‘The state is our goal,” underlined Bassil, adding, ‘As for power, it is a means, and the goal is to win the country and preserve the Movement within it, and when power conflicts with the goal, we abandon it and shift to the opposition.’
However, Bassil considered that the only risk of being in the opposition is abandoning FPM’s pioneering role in representing an essential component of the country, stressing that the Movement must not close in on itself but rather combine flexibility in behavior and firmness in principles, i.e. maintaining balance between principle and realism, accepting settlement and rejecting bargains.
The FPM Chief bel
ieved that his Movement ‘must remain the link between the inside and the outside, and as Lebanese we must remain the link between the East and the West, and be free in culture, belief and politics without being isolationist, rejecting and negative.’
Bassil reiterated the Lebanese message of coexistence, considering that the biggest challenge for Christians is establishing equal partnership in the country.
Source: National News Agency – Lebanon