Statement of the Prime Minister of Malaysia on the 2025 International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.

 

Some causes persist because they speak to something elemental about justice and belonging. Palestine is one such cause. At its core, the Palestinian question turns on a simple proposition: that a people should enjoy the rights and security that others take as their due. Today, as we mark the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, we reaffirm that this proposition remains as compelling as ever. The devastation of the last two years has brought the full weight of this crisis into view. Entire neighbourhoods in Gaza lie in ruins; families uprooted yet again; children lifted from the remains of homes that once held ordinary lives. These realities expose the ruthless forces that have shaped this tragedy and serve a warning we cannot ignore: that peace built on the ruins of persistent injustice cannot endure. As Malaysia has long argued, peace without a semblance of justice is not peace at all, but the germination of future conflict.


Malaysia remains engaged in the work of the United Nations Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices (SCIIP) and the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP). We also welcome the New York Declaration as a renewed effort by the international community to chart a credible path toward a sovereign Palestinian state. Through these bodies and frameworks, Malaysia will continue to press for accountability, adherence to international law and the protection of Palestinian rights. Our solidarity goes beyond rhetoric to practical action. Since September 2023, Malaysia has contributed a combined total of USD41.9 million (RM174 million), comprising USD17.9 million (RM74 million) already delivered and a further USD24 million (RM100 million) to be channelled in humanitarian assistance. We have supported civil-society efforts such as the Global Sumud Flotilla, for which I serve as patron of the Southeast Asian chapter. Our commitment to this cause is ironclad and will never be shaken.


At a moment like this, remembrance becomes a form of responsibility, and we will each remember in different ways. I will be thinking back to 1983, at the PLO meeting in Algiers, when I found myself standing on stage beside Yasser Arafat. It was a long time ago, yet I can still recall the lined, watchful face behind the familiar kaffiyeh. That moment galvanised my determination that standing with a people whose dignity has been denied must amount to more than performative solidarity.


I will remember, too, the stark images of Gaza and the West Bank that confront us today. They return unbidden because memory is one place where the Palestinian cause is fought. It is the one thing that can never be dispossessed. Today, we renew our belief that the Palestinian people will, in time, reclaim the freedom and dignity that are theirs by right. And we look toward the day when they stand proudly, without qualification, in their rightful place in a sovereign and independent Palestinian state.

Mr ANWAR IBRAHIM; Prime Minister of Malaysia


14 November 2025