Speaking at an IPU meeting in the Indonesian capital city of Jakarta on Saturday, the Speaker of the Kuwaiti National Assembly, Marzouq al-Ghanim, said that Kuwait is opposed to any kind of occupation, citing the fact that the Iraqi military invaded his oil-rich Persian Gulf kingdom more than thirty years ago, and fully occupied the country within two days.
“How could demands be made for expelling the Russian delegation [from the IPU] for a military campaign that started days or weeks ago, and yet not ousting Israeli delegates, whose regime has been occupying Palestine for more than 60 years?” the senior Kuwaiti legislator questioned.
“So this is a double standard that I don't think the IPU president [Duarte Pacheco] would accept,” Ghanim pointed out.
Kuwait is staunchly opposed to normalizing ties with Israel, unlike some Arab countries in the region, which have signed normalization agreements with the occupying regime in recent years.
In May last year, Kuwait’s National Assembly unanimously approved bills that outlaw any deals or normalization of ties with the Tel Aviv regime.
On August 18, 2020, 37 Kuwaiti lawmakers called on their government to reject a normalization deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Anti-Israeli sentiments run high in Kuwait. A poll conducted in 2019 by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, an American think tank, showed that 85 percent of Kuwaitis oppose normalizing ties with Israel.
ZZ/PR