Saudi ministers urge international community to defend regional maritime safety

During its weekly cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Saudi Arabia’s Council of Ministers called on the international community to take the necessary action to deter any threats against the security and safety of maritime navigation in the region.

The council said any violation of the freedom of international maritime navigation was a violation of international law.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards had captured a British-flagged oil tanker in the Gulf last week after Britain seized an Iranian vessel this month, ratcheting up tension along a vital international oil shipping route.

In a statement released on the Saudi Press Agency, the council also strongly “condemned the Israeli occupation authorities for the demolition of dozens of houses in the Wadi al-Homs neighborhood in the village of Sur Baher.”

They called on the international community to intervene “to stop this aggression and the dangerous escalation targeting the Palestinian presence, Jerusalem and attempt to change the legal character of the city and its demographic composition.”

Israeli forces began demolishing buildings near a military barrier on the outskirts of Jerusalem on Monday, in the face of Palestinian protests and international criticism. Bulldozers accompanied by hundreds of Israeli soldiers and police moved into Sur Baher, a Palestinian village on the edge of East Jerusalem in an area that Israel captured and occupied in the 1967 Middle East War.