A look back at 50 years of OIC as it meets in Makkah for Islamic Summit

Family photo from the 13th OIC ordinary summit in Istanbul, Turkey, in 2016 shows the heads of state and government who attended it. (AFP)
Updated 30 May 2019
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A look back at 50 years of OIC as it meets in Makkah for Islamic Summit

  • Makkah summit aims to build on highlighting Palestinian issue and unifying Islamic position on key issues
  • The OIC first met after an arson attack inside Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem in 1969

JEDDAH: From defending Palestinian rights to taking a unified stand on threats against member states, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) — the world’s second-largest inter-governmental body after the UN — has been making a difference in the Muslim world for the last 50 years.

The Islamic Summit in Makkah on Friday will be the organization’s 14th ordinary summit, and will be attended by kings and heads of state and government of the OIC’s 57 member countries.

The OIC first met a month after an arson attack inside Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem on Aug. 21, 1969.

An Australian tourist had set fire to a structure in the main Al-Qibly Mosque, destroying the 800-year-old pulpit of Saladin.

Reacting to the incident, representatives from 24 Islamic states gathered in Rabat, Morocco, from Sept. 22 to 25 for the first Islamic Summit, marking the birth of the OIC.




Saudi Arabia’s late King Faisal arriving in September 1969 at the Islamic Summit in Rabat, where the OIC was established. (Getty Images)

The next year, the first ever meeting of the Islamic Conference of Foreign Ministers (ICFM) was convened in Jeddah, and a decision was taken to establish a permanent secretariat in the Saudi city, headed by the OIC’s secretary-general.

The summit in Rabat was attended by representatives of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) with observer status.

The attendees pledged their adherence to the UN Charter and condemned Israel for the Al-Aqsa arson attack.

The second Islamic Summit was convened in February 1974 in Lahore, Pakistan, after a gap of five years.

Representatives from nearly 35 countries attended, proclaiming that “the solidarity of the Islamic peoples is based not on hostility towards any other human communities nor on distinctions of race and culture.”

The Lahore gathering called on OIC member states to sever all relations with Israel in favor of Islamic solidarity.

Seven years later, in January 1981, Saudi Arabia hosted the third Islamic Summit, known as the “Palestine and Al-Quds Al-Sharif Session,” from which Iran and Libya stayed away.

The final declaration read: “All Muslims form one nation of moderation, rejecting alignment to any and all blocs and ideologies, steadfastly refusing to surrender to divisive influences or to conflicts of interests.”

Convened against the backdrop of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the summit in Jeddah expressed its deep concern over Cold War developments, and renewed its call for the withdrawal of all foreign forces from the country.




A crowd watches as firefighters put out a fire in Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque in August 1969. (Getty Images)

The delegates decided that OIC member states would contribute at least $3 billion for the creation of an Islamic World Development Program.

The Saudi crown prince at the time, Prince Fahd bin Abdul Aziz, declared a grant of $1 billion by the Kingdom for its implementation.

In January 1984, Morocco hosted the fourth Islamic Summit in Casablanca at the invitation of King Hassan II, with representatives from 42 member states and international organizations, notably the UN and Arab League, in attendance.

The summit reaffirmed its commitment to the principles on which a solution to the Israeli-Arab conflict was to be based: Israel’s withdrawal from all Arab territories occupied in 1967, and the restoration of the Palestinians’ national rights, including their right of return and right to self-determination.

Three years later, in January 1987, Kuwait hosted the fifth Islamic Summit. The four-day meeting, attended by 44 member states, condemned the US for its support for Israel. With “Al-Quds Al-Sharif, Concord and Unity” as the theme, Senegal hosted the sixth Islamic Summit in Dakar in December 1991.

In the Dakar declaration, participants reaffirmed their “resolve to face the Israeli occupation of Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967; as well their determination to continue to reject and oppose the pursuit of Israeli plans and practices.”

The Islamic Summit returned to Casablanca for its seventh session in December 1994. The session, which coincided with the OIC’s 25th anniversary, was attended by 49 member states and international organizations.

At this gathering, delegates pledged to correct the image of Islam, referring to the spirit of “jihad” based on general principles of Shariah law.

The Palestinian issue also featured prominently at the summit, with participants voicing their support for the PLO in its struggle for Palestinian rights.

The delegates condemned Serbia’s aggression against Bosnia-Herzegovina, its non-compliance with UN Security Council resolutions, and its rejection of the Five-Nation Peace Plan.

The eighth session was convened under the patronage of Mohammad Khatami, Iran’s then-president, in December 1997, with “Dignity, Dialogue, Participation” as the theme.

The summit in Tehran was attended by 53 member states and inaugurated by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Large contributions were made by several Gulf countries, with Saudi Arabia alone giving $10 million for OIC activities and institutions.

The ninth Islamic Summit was convened in Doha, Qatar, in November 2000, with the theme “Peace and Development: Al-Aqsa Intifada.”

It was attended by 52 member states, with Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Central African Republic, Ivory Coast and Thailand participating as observers, and Russian President Vladimir Putin taking part in the opening session.

Against the backdrop of the US invasion of Iraq, the 10th Islamic Summit was convened in Putrajaya, Malaysia, in October 2003.




A Palestinian helped by a paramedic out of her building damaged by an Israeli air raid on Gaza City on Nov. 19, 2012.  (AFP)

Delegates strongly condemned threats by the Israeli government against then-Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, and appealed to the international community to force Israel to respect UN resolutions.

The summit strongly condemned the terrorist bombing of the Jordanian and Turkish embassies and the UN headquarters in Baghdad, and of holy sites in the Iraqi city of Najaf.

It also rejected “unfounded campaigns and allegations against Saudi Arabia,” and called for their end.

The summit expressed solidarity with, and support for, the Kingdom, and its backing of all Saudi efforts to fight terrorism.

The Islamic Summit returned to Dakar in December 2005 for its 11th session, where leaders pledged that their governments would do whatever it would take to make contributions amounting to $10 billion to the Islamic Solidarity Fund for Development, which was established under the aegis of the Islamic Development Bank (IDB).

In 2013, the 12th Islamic Summit was convened in Cairo, Egypt, with the participation of 56 member states along with a number of international and regional organizations.

Participants condemned the Israeli assault of November 2012 on the Gaza Strip, and the policy of collectively punishing the Palestinian people, particularly Israel’s blockade of the enclave.

The last Islamic Summit before the upcoming one in Makkah was held in April 2016 in Istanbul, Turkey.

There, delegates reaffirmed their commitment to the OIC’s central purpose: The Palestinian cause and the preservation of Haram Al-Sharif as an Islamic site.

They expressed concern for Muslim refugees who had to leave their home countries, notably Syria, due to armed conflicts and oppression. They also decried the rise of xenophobia and Islamophobia in Western countries.


Syria arrests alleged Daesh commander behind shrine attack plot: state media

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Syria arrests alleged Daesh commander behind shrine attack plot: state media

Authorities arrested “Abu Al-Hareth Al-Iraqi, commander in the Daesh organization,” said SANA
The interior ministry at that time had posted pictures of four men it identified as members of an arrested Daesh cell

DAMASCUS: Syrian Arab Republic authorities have arrested an alleged Daesh commander accused of planning a foiled attack targeting a Shiite Muslim shrine near Damascus, state media reported Saturday.
Authorities arrested “Abu Al-Hareth Al-Iraqi, commander in the Daesh organization,” said state news agency SANA, citing an unidentified intelligence official and using an Arabic acronym for Daesh.
He was “behind the planning of a number of operations,” SANA reported, adding that “the cell that was thwarted in its plan to attack the Sayyida Zeinab shrine” was working under his direction.
Last month, Syrian authorities said they foiled an Daesh attempt to blow up the shrine, Syria’s most visited Shiite pilgrimage site, located south of Damascus.
The interior ministry at that time had posted pictures of four men it identified as members of an arrested Daesh cell.
It was the first time the new Damascus authorities said they had foiled an Daesh attack.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said Saturday that the man arrested is “an Iraqi national who was one of the second-tier commanders in Daesh and spent his recent years” in the Badia desert region.
Iran-backed guards used to be deployed at the gates of the Sayyida Zeinab shrine, but fled in December shortly before Sunni Islamist-led rebels swept into Damascus, toppling president Bashar Assad.
Over the years, Shiite shrines have been a frequent target of attacks by Sunni extremists of the Daesh group, both in Syria and neighboring Iraq.
Daesh seized large swathes of Syrian and Iraqi territory in the early years of Syria’s civil war, declaring a cross-border “caliphate” in 2014.
US-backed Kurdish-led forces in Syria territorially defeated its proto-state in 2019, but the militants have maintained a presence in the country’s vast desert.

‘Welcome back’: Israelis cheer, cry as hostages freed from Gaza

Updated 15 February 2025
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‘Welcome back’: Israelis cheer, cry as hostages freed from Gaza

  • All three men were taken from Nir Oz, a kibbutz community near the Gaza border
  • They watched the release from the town of Carmei Gat in southern Israel

TEL AVIV: Holding up signs reading “sorry and welcome back” and “complete the ceasefire,” hundreds of Israelis gathered in Tel Aviv’s “Hostages Square” on Saturday to watch Hamas release three Israeli hostages from Gaza.
In smaller groups, friends and relatives of the released men — Israeli-American Sagui Dekel-Chen, 36, Israeli-Russian Sasha Trupanov, 29, and Israeli-Argentine Yair Horn, 46 — shed tears of joy at the sight of their loved ones, who were made to address a crowd in Gaza from a stage alongside rifle-wielding militants.
All three men were taken from Nir Oz, a kibbutz community near the Gaza border, during Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 which sparked the war.
Dekel-Chen’s wife, Avital, who gave birth to the couple’s third daughter two months after her husband was seized, was waiting for him at an army base in southern Israel.
“My breath has returned. He looks so handsome,” she said following his release in a call to her sister aired by Israel’s Kan public broadcaster.
Other relatives of Dekel-Chen said they were relieved to see him alive.
“I am excited, and I see that he looks OK, and I want to hug him,” his mother-in-law told Kan, wiping away tears.
Dekel-Chen’s sister-in-law said: “Thank God that everything is OK and they were on their feet.”
They watched the release from the town of Carmei Gat in southern Israel, where some residents of Nir Oz have moved to since the attack.
In Kfar Saba, in central Israel, a friend of the Horn family, Ronnie Milo, told AFP that she was experiencing “unimaginable joy” on seeing him return alive.
Ronli Nissim, of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum campaign group, said: “It’s an emotional roller coaster, and also very bittersweet.”
“Every time someone comes back... we are just a jumble of emotions,” she said.
“But then we’re thinking about everyone who’s left behind, and we know that they are mistreated, we know that they’re in hell, and they’re just waiting to be released.”
So far under the Gaza truce, 19 Israeli hostages have been released in exchange of hundreds of Palestinians in Israeli custody.
The 42-day first phase of the truce stipulates the release of a total of 33 hostages, including eight Israel says are dead, in exchange for some 1,900 Palestinian prisoners.
Out of the 251 people abducted during the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas militants, 70 remain in Gaza, with half of them dead according to the Israeli military.
In Ramat Gan, near Tel Aviv, Trupanov’s friends and family clapped, cheered and cried as they watched the 29-year-old, who had been held by Hamas’s ally Islamic Jihad, step out of a car in Gaza.
In a statement from the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, Trupanov’s family said they were grateful to see him return.
“Finally, Sasha can be surrounded by his loved ones and begin a new path,” said the statement, adding that they did not know if Trupanov was “aware that his father, Vitaly, was murdered on October 7.”
“This knowledge — or lack thereof — will completely transform his homecoming from a day of great joy to one of deep mourning for his beloved father,” they said.


Kremlin thanks Hamas for freeing Russian-Israeli hostage: state media

Updated 15 February 2025
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Kremlin thanks Hamas for freeing Russian-Israeli hostage: state media

  • Moscow welcomed the freeing of Alexander Trufanov and expresses its gratitude to Hamas

MOSCOW: The Kremlin on Saturday said it was grateful to Palestinian militant group Hamas for freeing a Russian-Israeli hostage from Gaza in another prisoner exchange with Israel.
“Moscow welcomes the freeing of Alexander Trufanov (identified by Israel as Sasha Trupanov) and expresses its gratitude to the Hamas leadership for taking this decision,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to the RIA Novosti news agency.


Lebanon official media report Israeli drone strike in south

Updated 15 February 2025
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Lebanon official media report Israeli drone strike in south

  • An Israeli enemy drone carried out a strike targeting the outskirts of Ainata, said NNA

BEIRUT: Lebanese official media said an Israeli drone struck the country’s south on Saturday, without reporting casualties, days before a deadline in a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.
“An Israeli enemy drone carried out a strike” targeting the outskirts of the town of Ainata, the state-run National News Agency (NNA) said, adding that “nobody was hurt” and that “drones and surveillance aircraft are still flying over the area at low altitude.”


Three Israeli hostages freed in Gaza, Israel releases 369 Palestinians in exchange

Updated 15 February 2025
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Three Israeli hostages freed in Gaza, Israel releases 369 Palestinians in exchange

  • Exchange of hostages and prisoners maintains ceasefire, with buses carrying freed Palestinians arriving to cheering crowds in Ramallah, Gaza
  • The swap takes place after negotiations, with both sides focusing on the next phase to return the remaining hostages and end the war

KHAN YOUNIS:  Hamas released Israeli hostages Iair Horn, Sagui Dekel Chen and Sasha (Alexander) Troufanov in Gaza on Saturday and Israel freed some 369 Palestinian prisoners and detainees in exchange, after mediators helped avert a collapse of the fragile ceasefire.
The three Israelis were led onto a stage with Palestinian Hamas militants armed with automatic rifles standing on each side of them at the site in Khan Younis, live footage showed, before they were taken back into Israel by Israeli forces.
Shortly afterwards, buses carrying freed Palestinian prisoners and detainees departed Israel’s Ofer jail in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The first bus arrived in Ramallah to a cheering crowd, some waving Palestinian flags.

Freed Palestinian prisoners gesture from a bus after being released by Israel as part of a hostages-prisoners swap and a ceasefire deal in Gaza between Hamas and Israel, in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, February 15, 2025. (Reuters)

“We didn’t expect to be freed, but God is great, God set us free,” said Musa Nawarwa, 70, from the West Bank town of Bethlehem, who was serving two life terms for killings of Israeli soldiers in the West Bank.
Buses carrying some of the hundreds of Palestinian freed prisoners and detainees, some flashing victory signs as they hung from the windows, arrived later at the European Hospital in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.

A few were returning to an enclave they have not seen for years, before it was blasted into rubble by Israeli airstrikes and shelling in 15 months of war. But most were rounded up after the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
The ceasefire’s second phase would usher in negotiations to return the remaining living hostages among the 251 seized that day, and complete an Israeli military withdrawal before a final end to the war and the reconstruction of Gaza.

Israeli hostages Iair Horn, 46, left, Sagui Dekel Chen, 36, center left, and Alexander Troufanov, 29, right, are escorted by Hamas on a stage before being handed over to the Red Cross in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip on Feb. 15, 2025. (AP)

Argentina-born Iair Horn, 46, was taken captive together with his younger brother Eitan. Horn appeared to have lost considerable weight in captivity.
“Now, we can breathe a little. Our Iair is home after surviving hell in Gaza. Now, we need to bring Eitan back so our family can truly breathe,” Horn’s family said in a statement.
The swap of the three Israelis for the 369 Palestinians allayed growing alarm that the ceasefire agreement could unravel before the end of the 42-day first stage of the truce pact in effect since January 19.
In what has become known as Hostage Square in Tel Aviv, people broke into cheers and tears after hearing the Red Cross was on its way to deliver the three to Israeli military forces.
Dekel Chen, a US-Israeli, Troufanov, a Russian Israeli, and Horn along with his brother Eitan were seized in Kibbutz Nir Oz, one of the communities near Gaza’s border that were overrun by Hamas gunmen on October 7, 2023.
Some of the dozens of masked Islamist Hamas fighters deployed at the handover site carried rifles seized from the Israeli military during the October attack, Hamas sources said.

On the handover stage in Khan Younis, the hostages were made to give short statements in Hebrew and militants presented Horn with an hourglass and photo of another Israeli hostage still in Gaza and his mother, reading “time is running out (for the hostages still in Gaza).”
Troufanov was abducted with his mother, grandmother and girlfriend — all of whom were released during a brief November 2023 pause in hostilities. His father was killed in the attack on Nir Oz, one of the worst-hit communities, where one in four people either died or were taken hostage.

A freed Palestinian prisoner is hugged by a boy after being released by Israel as part of a hostages-prisoners swap and a ceasefire deal in Gaza between Hamas and Israel, in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, February 15, 2025. (Reuters)

On October 7, Dekel Chen, 36, left his pregnant wife and two little daughters in the family safe room to go out and fight gunmen rampaging through the kibbutz.
He embraced his tearful wife Avital tightly and said “perfect” with a big smile when she told him the name of their baby daughter, who he has not yet seen, was Shahar Mazal, Hebrew for “dawn” and “luck,” in a video released by the military.
Nineteen Israeli and five Thai hostages have been released so far, with 73 still in captivity, around half of whom have been declared dead in absentia by Israeli authorities.
Prospects for the ceasefire surviving have been shaken by US President Donald Trump’s call for Palestinians to be resettled permanently out of Gaza, and for the tiny enclave to be turned over to the US to be redeveloped as a seaside resort. That idea has been rejected out of hand by Palestinian groups, Arab states and Western allies of Washington.