Arab League makes food security priority amid global crisis

CAIRO: The Arab League’s assistant secretary-general has called for the strengthening of the Arab boycott of Israel as an effective tool to confront the Israeli occupation.

Saeed Abu Ali made his comments at a meeting with Arab delegates at the organization’s general secretariat in Cairo.

“This meeting comes as the Israeli occupation authorities are still continuing their systematic campaign of aggression against the Palestinian people, their sanctities and their property,” he said.

“These ongoing crimes require the intervention of the international community, especially the (UN) Security Council and regional and international organizations, to assume their responsibilities and stop the policy of double standards,” he added.

“Hundreds of relevant international resolutions … calling for stopping the aggression against the Palestinian people and ending the Israeli occupation” have been issued but not implemented, Abu Ali said. He called for pressure, primarily economic, to force Israeli compliance.

The head of the Palestinian delegation at the meeting, Muhannad Al-Aklouk, urged states, parliaments and civil society to join a boycott similar to that against apartheid South Africa.

Abu Ali praised the Norwegian government’s decision to label the products of Israeli settlements on occupied Arab territories.