‘Our freedom is incomplete without freedom of the Palestinians’, new Iranian envoy quotes Mandela

Iran’s new Ambassador to Sri Lanka, 

Hashem Ashjazadeh, quoting former 

South African President, the late Nelson 

Mandela, said yesterday "Our freedom is

incomplete without the freedom of the 

Palestinians."

He said that with the support of the colonialists, criminal Zionism first occupied the land of Palestine, in 1948, and then Beit-ul-Moqaddas. "Over the years, the issue of Zionist occupation has been covered up by so-called peace plans in the region and peace talks. That is why the solutions to the problem of occupation of Palestine have not yet been achieved and have failed. In this regard, with the presidency of Donald Trump, a new plan called The Deal of the Century was unveiled with the aim of ending the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. A plan that many observers believe will fail, as in previous plans, because none of them reflect the true rights of the Palestinian people. Recognition of Quds as the capital of the Zionist regime, the transfer of 30 percent of the West Bank to Israel, opposition to the return of Palestinian refugees to their country, and the complete disarmament of Palestine are among the main provisions of the The Deal of the Century.

During more than seven decades of its occupation of the Palestinian land, the Zionist regime has committed occupation, aggression and crimes against the true owners of this land, and kept pursuing this policy by constructing and expanding Zionist settlement units and making most Palestinians homeless, desecrating the al-Aqsa mosque, Judaizing Quds and the West Bank, maintaining its blockade of the Gaza Strip, illegally annexing the occupied Golan and seeking to annex larger parts of the West Bank.

 In 1979, Al-Quds International Day was founded by the Ayatollah Khomeini to mark the injustices being inflicted daily upon the Palestinian people by their Israeli oppressors and occupiers: "I invite Muslims, all over the globe, to consecrate the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan as ‘Quds Day’ and to proclaim the international solidarity of Muslims in support of the legitimate rights of the Muslim people of Palestine" Ayatollah Khomeini said on August 1979.

 Since then, the day has come to symbolize the united global struggle against oppression and tyranny worldwide, with the decades long, Palestinian battle for recognition and freedom from brutal Israeli apartheid, central to that struggle.

 The Islamic Republic of Iran, while expressing its solidarity with the Palestine cause, reiterates the important responsibility of the International community, the UN in particular, to end the organized occupation of Palestine and the holy al-Quds and to help the Palestinian people achieve their right to self-determination and establish an independent Palestinian state", Ambassador Ashjazadeh said.