Hailing the Palestinian people’s steadfastness and struggle as well as “Al-Quds defenders,” the spokesman warned the Zionist regime against “new adventurism and provocative measures.”

Earlier on Sunday, tens of thousands of Israeli settlers held their annual “March of the Flags” event, waving Israeli flags and screaming offensive slogans into the middle of the major Palestinian avenue in East Al-Quds’ Old City.

Although there is an existing agreement prohibiting non-Muslim prayers on the site, the Israelis pushed their way inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque’s enclosure, where they performed religious rites under the protection of the regime’s military.

The event marks Israel’s 1967 takeover of East Al-Quds, which the Palestinians want as their future capital. According to Israeli NGO Ir Amim, the march is linked to violence against Palestinians and a “display of incitement, Jewish dominance, and racism.”

Khatibzadeh said the liberation of Al-Quds from the Israeli occupation and violence is the Muslim world’s top priority.

“All of the world’s freedom-seeking people, especially the Muslim people and countries, are duty-bound to act in a united manner towards all-out defense of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and confrontation against the Zionist apartheid regime,” he underlined.

At least 145 Palestinians were injured during the day’s clashes with Israeli forces and illegal settlers across the occupied West Bank, including East Al-Quds, where the Israeli fanatics were conducting the contentious march, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent.

It added that at least 18 of those wounded were hit by live Israeli fire.

Khatibzadeh expressed confidence that the regional Resistance Axis will succeed in preserving the Al-Aqsa Mosque and opposing “the bogus Israeli regime’s terrorist measures.”

He urged international bodies to carry out their legal obligations by halting “Zionist occupiers’ onslaught on the defenseless Palestinian people.”

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The United States is exploiting human rights as a weapon to achieve its interests, according to the spokesperson, who asserted that the sublime concept has been degraded to a plaything by Washington.

“Unfortunately, this approach has degraded the sublime concept of human rights to a plaything,” Khatibzadeh underscored while addressing a conference of Iranian non-governmental organizations with consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).

The Iranian diplomat went on to say that human rights is one of the most significant victims of international relations at this very time.

“Due to the approach adopted by the centers of power in the world, the issue of human rights has been turned into a political tool to advance those centers’ goals,” he noted.

“The United States uses human rights as a tool in its foreign policy toolbox in order to achieve its goals,” Khatibzadeh continued, slamming the U.S. for its distorted approach to human rights.

Iran has often warned the U.S. and its Western allies against using human rights as a tool to undermine independent countries.

In relevant remarks last week, the secretary of Iran’s High Council for Human Rights Kazem Gharibabadi blasted the U.S. and Western European bloc for politicizing human rights and using it as a tool to exert pressure on non-aligned countries.

“The Western European countries and the United States have this selective approach, unfortunately,” Kazem Gharibabadi pointed out.

“So, the countries that are not allied to these states are under political pressure in international human rights mechanisms and structures because they are going to abuse human rights as a political tool to achieve their own foreign policy goals,” he underlined.

The United States has a long history of domestic and international human rights violations.

Despite major protests around the country following the deaths of African-American men George Floyd and Daunte Wright by white police officers last year, a report released in late December indicated that the number of Americans murdered in confrontations with U.S. police has not dwindled.

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