Dr M: M'sia-Turkey cooperation can help keep Palestine issue alive

Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad said Malaysia and Turkey could work together in keeping the Palestine issue alive despite efforts to extinguish the matter completely.

He said by doing so, the world would appreciate the Palestinians' decades of struggle against the injustice that has been done on them.

“There is an attempt to just kill the issue completely as if nothing has happened. But the fact is that there is a great deal of injustice perpetrated against the Palestinians…,” he said in an interview with Turkey’s Anadolu Agency in Ankara during his four-day visit to the country.

Reiterating his statement at the 2018 United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), Dr Mahathir said the main cause of terrorism in the Israel-Palestine issue is the creation of Israel in an illegal way.

The Prime Minister said the seizure of Palestinian land was done without any consideration for the people living in the area at the time and without getting public opinion on the matter.

“The land was just taken and given to Israel without any consideration for the thinking and feelings of the people, at that time, living in Palestine,” he added.

Dr Mahathir said at the very least, Israel should allow the previous Palestinian population to reclaim their property or to have two different states and stop building settlements in the Palestinian territory.

“This is what we want... And if we know, besides this, the causes for terrorism, and we treat them, we take action to stop this injustice perpetrated on the Palestinians, I think there will be less terrorism or no terrorism all over the world,” he said.

Dr Mahathir also said that the media has not mentioned or highlighted enough on how Palestinian land was seized to create the state of Israel or how Israel has acted against the international law repeatedly.

“There seems to be an agreement on the part of the media not to highlight the problems of Palestine. These have not been mentioned often. The main thing that we think we should always stress is the causes of terrorism,” he said.

Asked to comment on the so-called Deal of the Century announced by the US, Dr Mahathir said the idea was just to promote “their own side of the problem” and to “justify whatever it is they are doing.”

- Bernama