THE ISRAELI enemy carried out an air aggression on Thursday on the two international airports of Damascus and Aleppo, taking them out of service, according to a Syrian military source.
The source added that shelling the two airports that occurred simultaneously at 13:50 caused material damage to the airstrips which led to their being out of service, Syria reported.
Local media reported that Syrian air defences were launched in response to the Israeli attacks.
Israel frequently attacks the positions of Syria’s military and its allies since 2011, when the Arab country found itself in the grip of rampant foreign-backed violence and terrorism.
Syria welcomed the Arab League’s decision on condemning the violation of the rights against the Palestinians, and calling on ‘Israel’ to implement its obligations as an occupying party.
While in return it reserved any phrases that could be understood as equality between the Israeli enemy and the Palestinian people living under occupation.
‘Arab League adopted a decision at the conclusion of its extraordinary meeting at the level of foreign ministers at the League’s headquarters in Cairo on Wednesday October 11, 2023 to discuss the recent Israeli aggression against Gaza Strip and the Palestinian people, and ways to take political action to stop this aggression at the request of the Palestine state and the support of Syria and a number of Arab countries,’ SANA quoted Syria Foreign and Expatriates Ministry as saying in a statement on Thursday.
The decision called for an immediate stop of the Israeli war on Gaza Strip, condemned all the aggression and violations of the rights against the Palestinian people, the Syrian Foreign Ministry added.
The Ministry stressed the need to lift the siege on Gaza Strip and allow the immediate entry of humanitarian aid, food and fuel into it, and the need for ‘Israel’ to stop its decisions to deprive the Strip of water and electricity.
The Foreign Ministry said that the decision also stressed the right of the Palestinian people to establish their state with Jerusalem as its capital, warned against attempts to displace them outside their land, and stressed the Arab Peace Initiative.
The decision included at the same time ‘a call on all parties to exercise restraint,’ and ‘called for the release of all prisoners and detainees,’ the Ministry went on to say.
The Ministry noted that Syria welcomed, when the decision was adopted, the condemnation of the aggression and violation of the rights against the brotherly Palestinian people, and calling on Israel to implement its obligations as an occupying party and demanding it to stop its criminal measures against Gaza Strip and the Palestinian people.
Syria reserves any phrases in the decision that could be understood as equality between the Israeli occupier and the Palestinian people living under occupation, Foreign Ministry affirmed.
The Ministry pointed that the Syria’s reservations on these aspects of the decision were supported by many Arab countries, as Algeria, Iraq, Libya, and Tunisia registered reservations in the same regard.
- What is happening in occupied Palestine today is the result of decades of colonial occupation and aggressive practices, and the Palestinian people are exercising their legitimate right to defend themselves, Syria Foreign and Expatriates Minister, Dr. Fayssal Mikdad said.
Mikdad’s remarks came in Syria’s statement during the emergency meeting of the Arab League Council at the ministerial level at the League’s headquarters in Cairo on Wednesday.
The occupation’s practices and its threat to wipe Gaza off the earth, and the expansion of its crimes in the region, are doomed to failure, and the Arabs today have a duty and responsibility to provide support to the Palestinian people.
Mikdad noted that Syria welcomes holding this emergency meeting which aims to discuss Arab and international action in confronting the fascist crimes and massacres committed by the Israeli occupation in Gaza, relentlessly, with declared and unashamed support from the collective West, on top of which the US.
He added that recent days have revealed the falsity, lies, and collective hypocrisy of the West and its claims related to human rights and international humanitarian law, or what it now claims about a rules-based world.
The Foreign Minister wondered: ‘Who is the Arab country that does not suffer as a result of the West’s collective interference in its internal affairs, and in the lives of its people, its economy, its beliefs, and its moral values?
‘We are living today in a world that is changing profoundly, and the new world will ensure the building of an international system based on multipolarity, and does not accept hegemony.’
He added that terrorists supported by the Israeli occupation launched an attack a week ago that resulted in hundreds of casualties in the city of Homs, and the perpetrators of the same crime attacked the Palestinians in Gaza a day later.
The Israeli occupation government’s disregard for international laws, human values, and the rule-based world that they demand, and its insistence on racist practices and ethnic cleansing, aim to break the will of the Palestinian people and cancel their right to exist, said Mikdad.
Mikdad reiterated Syria’s full support for the Palestinian people, who today exercise their legitimate right to defend themselves by various means.
He stressed that the Israeli occupation must be aware that the practices of its far-right government, its repressive measures against the Palestinian people, its threat to wipe Gaza off the earth, and the expansion of the scope of its crimes in the region are doomed to failure.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi discussed in a phone call on Wednesday evening the latest developments of the situation in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The two presidents affirmed their position in support of the Palestinian people in confronting the crimes they are exposed to, and their legitimate resistance to defend their just cause and restore their usurped rights.
President al-Assad stressed that Zionist policies are causing the bloodshed, stressing the necessity of rapid action at the Arab and Islamic levels to protect the Palestinian people, particularly in the Gaza Strip, and to stop the Israeli raids targeting children and women.
- Israel is using banned white phosphorus munitions against desperate people in the tightly-besieged Gaza Strip, a human rights monitor says, as the impoverished small territory has been under ceaseless bombardment by the occupying regime for the past five days.
In a post on X on Thursday, Maha Hussaini, director of strategies at the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor in Geneva, said that the Tel Aviv regime was ‘using internationally-prohibited white phosphorus in Gaza.’
‘These munitions are an indiscriminate incendiary weapon that ignite on contact with oxygen. In closed spaces, the toxic fumes can cause asphyxiation and permanent respiratory damage,’ she added.
