Jeddah — The Executive Committee of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) will convene an extraordinary meeting of permanent representatives here on Tuesday to discuss the Israeli escalation against the occupied Golan Heights. The meeting will be held at the request of Kuwait, which holds the presidency of the current session of the OIC Council of Foreign Ministers. OIC member states will take a unified and strong position against the Israeli government's meeting that was held in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights and the remarks by Israel's prime minister that "the Golan Heights will forever remain under Israeli sovereignty". The OIC considered these provocative acts by the Israeli government a serious escalation and a flagrant violation of international laws. The just-concluded OIC summit in Istanbul strongly condemned the Israeli policy rejecting compliance with Security Council resolution 497 (1981) on the occupied Golan Heights and its policy of annexation and construction of colonial settlements, confiscation of territories, diversion of water sources and imposition of Israeli citizenship on Syrian nationals. It demanded full Israeli withdrawal from the occupied Syrian Golan to the June 4, 1967 borders, in accordance with Security Council resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973) and the principle of land for peace and the terms of reference of the Madrid Peace Conference and the Arab Peace Initiative adopted by the Arab Summit in Beirut on 28 March 2002. US President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin have reportedly agreed to support the return of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights to Syria. The two presidents gave their top diplomats, Secretary of State John Kerry and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, the green light to include such a clause in a proposal being drafted at the Geneva conference on ending the Syrian civil war.
