Salam Alaykum Wa Rahmatullah Wa Brakato (God's peace, mercy and blessings be upon you). I have the pleasure to thank Egypt's President Mohammed Morsi for hosting the Islamic Summit and the good preparation of the summit's agenda. We hope this summit will issue decisions achieving aspirations of the Islamic nation and ways of promoting joint Islamic action. Dear brothers, The crucial challenges, developments and changes experienced by our Islamic nation, requires all of us to discuss its dimensions and its political, economic and social repercussions as well as the necessity to follow the best methodological approaches to address and mitigate them against the peoples of the Islamic nation, especially in the economic and developmental fields, as Allah Almighty said: "Help you one another in Al-Birr and At-Taqwa (virtue, righteousness and piety); but do not help one another in sin and transgression". Amid these challenges, the conflicts in the Islamic world represent an obsession haunting all OIC Member States. The Arab-Israeli conflict comes at the forefront of these conflicts which revolves around the cause of the Palestinian people and the obtaining of their legitimate rights as well as addressing the Israeli settlement expansion that manage to seize Palestinian territories and launch military operations against the Palestinian people relentlessly. This matter requires all of us to oppose it and intensify efforts to mobilize international unified stance to mount pressure on Israel in order to halt its aggression, settlement expansion and swallowing more Palestinian territories. We have to work for the resumption of negotiations in accordance with known international references, the Arab Peace Initiative, the road map plan and ending the suffering of the Palestinian people who showed enough patience to restore their legitimate rights and establish their independent state with the holy city of Al-Quds as its capital within the framework of strengthening the opportunities of bringing about peace and security in the Middle East. --More
