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Al-Jubeir: We don’t believe the operations achieve a political purpose
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With
additional reporting by Lamya Tawfik, IOL Staff
WASHINGTON,
December 2 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Saudi Arabia no longer
gives money directly to relatives of Palestinian suicide bombers, but
instead helps families in need through humanitarian organizations, a top
Saudi official said Sunday, December 2.
“What
we do in that case is we give money to the Palestinian Red Cross and to
the International Red Cross and to the Red Crescent Society and to the
United Nations organizations to provide money to Palestinian families in
need,” said Adel al-Jubeir, a Saudi foreign policy advisor interviewed
Sunday on CNN, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
“We
do not designate who they should give the money to,” he said. Al-Jubeir
made it clear that Saudi officials “do not encourage people to engage
in suicide bombings.
“Our
grand mufti, our chief religious theologian in Saudi Arabia, over a year
ago condemned suicide bombings as immoral. We also don’t believe that
they achieve a political purpose,” he added.
In
May, Israeli officials said they captured documents in Palestinian
territory they occupied that Saudi Arabia sent large amounts of money to
the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, as well as to the Hamas
Resistance Movement - a group on the U.S. terrorist watch list.
However,
a Saudi official told AFP at the time that the aid would continue
because the relatives of the suicide bombers were not responsible for
the actions of their family members, instead blaming instead the
Israelis for the situation.
Speaking
to IslamOnline, Dr. Waheed Abdul Majeed, a political analyst from the
Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, said that the move
comes as part of an Arab movement to create a truce in the occupied
territories.
“Hamas
and Fatah will meet in Cairo after the Eid, and will propose a
one-year-truce in exchange for negotiations and the move is being
sponsored by Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
“When
the Palestinian factions plan resistance operations to put in mind
several considerations. Economic support for the bomber’s families is
one of them. This is why, in order to put pressure on the factions to
abide by the halt of the resistance operations, Saudi Arabia made that
announcement,” he said.
