“Saudi support to the Palestinian people will continue in line with the directives of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Fahd, Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of the National Guard, and Prince Sultan, second deputy premier and minister of defense and aviation,” Prince Salman said in his opening speech at a seminar on Saudi-Palestinian relations on Saturday night.
Welcoming the participants to the seminar, Prince Salman said research programs by King Abdul Aziz Center would help document efforts made by the government and people of Saudi Arabia in support of the Palestinian cause since the time of the late King Abdul Aziz.
Prince Salman received messages from Palestinian intellectuals, writers and academics in the West Bank and Jerusalem on the occasion of the seminar.
Addressing the seminar yesterday, Secretary-General of the International Islamic Relief Organization Adnan Basha outlined Saudi efforts to back the Palestinian cause. The session was chaired by Jameel Mahmoud Murad of the Institute of Diplomatic Studies at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Participating in yesterday’s session, Hamad Al-Bazaei, undersecretary at the Ministry of Finance and National Economy, said the Kingdom funded the United Nations relief efforts which cared for three million Palestinian refugees spending a sum of more than $60 million.
The Saudi Committee for the Support of Jerusalem Intifada, headed by Interior Minister Prince Naif, has so far provided SR145 million for the families of the victims of Israeli aggression, said Saed Al-Harthy, head of the committee in a paper read at the seminar.
Despite the late King Abdul Aziz’s preoccupation with the consolidation of the Kingdom in its early stage, he always had the welfare of the Palestinian people in his mind, said Fahmi Muqbil of the King Faisal University in his work paper on the stand of the Kingdom on the escalation of the Palestinian issue since the Jewish immigration and partition of Palestine.
