AL-QUDS (Dispatches) – Zionist prime minister Yair Lapid and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan have spoken on the phone, Lapid’s office said in a statement.
Erdogan has urged the Zionist prime minister to refrain from Tel Aviv’s illegal construction of new settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.
He also expressed hope that the policies of preserving the status of Al-Aqsa Mosque and not building new settlements in the occupied territories would continue until the upcoming Zionist elections.
Lapid has become the interim prime minister of the occupying regime as the regime heads towards elections on November 1 in the aftermath of the collapse of the Lapid-Bennet coalition.
Nearly 700,000 Zionist live in illegal settlements built since the 1967 occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East Al-Quds. The UN Security Council has in several resolutions condemned the Zionist regime’s settlement projects, all of which are illegal under international law.
The last round of Zionist-Palestinian talks collapsed in 2014. Among the major sticking points in those negotiations was the regime’s continued settlement construction activities on occupied lands.
According to Turkey’s Communications Directorate, Erdogan and Lapid also discussed bilateral ties and regional issues.
Earlier this year, Erdogan expressed his country’s readiness to cooperate with the occupying regime in the energy sector as Ankara and Tel Aviv are working to repair their long-strained relations.
Ties between Ankara and Tel Aviv hit their nadir in 2010 following a Zionist naval raid on a Turkish aid ship, the Mavi Marmara, which was en route to deliver humanitarian aid to the blockaded Gaza Strip. The raid resulted in the death of 10 activists.
In 2013, Turkish-Zionist relations entered a period of normalization after then-Zionist prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued an apology to Turkey, and the Tel Aviv regime paid $20 million in compensation to the Mavi Marmara victims.