A wave of bloody Palestinian-Israeli clashes are a "new intifada" that must receive Arab support until Israel negotiates a real peace, Arab League Secretary General Abdel-Meguid said Sunday.
"We must support this new intifada until it bears fruit just like the intifada of 1987, which forced the Israelis to sit down at the negotiating table," Abdel Meguid said.
Abdel Meguid was speaking to reporters following an emergency meeting of Arab ambassadors at the Arab League to discuss three days of clashes that have claimed the lives of more than 30 Palestinians and wounded more than 700.
Between 1987 and 1993, the date of the interim Oslo peace accords, the Palestinian territories were swept by the intifada, the popular uprising against Israeli occupation. A total of 1,258 Palestinians were killed by Israeli troops or settlers, according to a tally kept by AFP from Palestinian sources.
The Arab League issued a statement after its meeting saying Jerusalem is the capital of a future independent Palestinian state and represents a "red circle, which should not be played with."
The ambassadors of the 22-member league reaffirmed their view that east Jerusalem is Arab.
It "constitutes an indivisible part of the Palestinian territories occupied in June 1967, to which international law applies like the occupied territories," the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the statement said.
The league believes it "is impossible to establish peace (in the territories) without it being established in Jerusalem," it added.
In paying tribute to the "souls of the martyrs who fell" during the clashes, the league "salutes and supports the resistance of the Palestinian people and its valiant intifada against the cowardly Israeli attacks."
It called on the "UN Security Council, its permanent members and the European Union to condemn this unjust Israeli massacre which aims to block the peace process."
The league also asked the Security Council to set up a committee to investigate the "horrible crimes" committed against the Palestinians – CAIRO (AFP)
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