The Nablus-based Al-Aloul family handed over the Turkish Consul General in Jerusalem, Ahmet Riza Demirer, a trust which was left by a Turkish soldier during the First World War.

The handover ceremony took place at the headquarters of the Nablus Governorate in the occupied West Bank, and was attended by the Nablus Governor Ibrahim Ramadan, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Emigrants Amal Jado and other political and security figures.

"On this day, the time has come to hand over the trust that a Palestinian family has maintained for more than a hundred years,” said Ramadan, as he handed over the trust, composed of Ottoman-era banknotes, to the Turkish Consul General.

Meantime, Demirer said although the Turks and the Palestinian people administratively separated a hundred years ago, bilateral relations and sentiments of brotherhood between the two peoples remain robust.

Demirer thanked the Al-Aloul family for maintaining the trust of the Turkish soldier for a hundred years, and said that this trust reflects the brotherhood between the two peoples.

Ismail Al-Aloul, a member of the Al-Aloul family that had kept the trust for years, said he inherited the trust from his grandfather Omar and his grandfather’s brother, Mutee, who had received the trust from the pre-1917 Turkish soldier.

Until the First World War, the area of historical Palestine was part of the Turkish-run Ottoman Empire, which collapsed in 1922 with the rise of the modern colonialization movement.