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"Iron cannot be confronted but with iron, violence with violence and occupation with resistance": Mussa
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CAIRO,
November 20 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Arab League chief Amr
Mussa on Wednesday, November 20, said resistance was the only way for
the Palestinians to end Israel's occupation of their land.
Mussa
made his comments before taking the plane to Damascus to attend a
meeting of Arab foreign ministers due to start Wednesday that is set
to focus on the Iraqi crisis and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,
Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
"Iron
cannot be confronted but with iron, violence with violence and
occupation with resistance," he told reporters.
Mussa
said the two-day meeting in Damascus will "study the developments
in the region, notably in the occupied [Palestinian] territories and
in Iraq."
Israel's
center-left Labor party has chosen Amram Mitzna to lead it in the
general elections due in January, against the right-wing Likud of
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Mitzna has promised a swift resumption of
peace talks with the Palestinians if elected.
The
meeting in Damascus will gather the foreign ministers of Bahrain,
Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen and the
Palestinian Authority, who make up with Mussa a follow-up committee
for an Arab peace initiative.
A
Saudi-inspired initiative adopted by the Arab summit held in March in
Beirut offers Israel normal ties with the Arab world in return for its
withdrawal from all the territories occupied in the 1967 war,
including Syria's Golan Heights.
Lebanese
Foreign Minister Mahmoud Hammoud, whose country chairs the rotating
presidency of the Arab League, said Tuesday, November 19, the meeting
had "an exceptional character" because it would examine ways
"to delay" a U.S.-strike on Iraq.
Hammoud
said a U.S.-led strike "is a given, the debate is now focused on
the ways to delay it."
An
Arab League official, meanwhile, told AFP the Arab ministers would
also set to "formulate a vision on the U.S. 'roadmap'" for
peace in the Middle East, which is also backed by Russia, the European
Union and the United Nations.
It
calls for the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel by 2005
and was discussed with Arab states by U.S. envoy William Burns during
a regional tour last month.
