Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak renewed Monday his call for finding a negotiated solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, reiterating that talks were the only feasible solution, the daily Al Ahram reported.
“If Israel wants to live in peace and stability in this area, a Palestinian state should be established on Palestinian land and both sides should cooperate to reach a solution to the conflict,” he said.
The president held an open dialogue with top Muslim clerics clerics after inaugurating the International Conference Center of Al Azhar University.
Mubarak responded to their inquiries by pointing out that the country’s higher interests required that he not provide full answers for each question.
The clerics focused their questions on many issues, including the unfair linkage between Islam and terrorism, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, peace in the Middle East and some internal issues.
“Terrorism will never stop unless the Palestinian problem is solved,” said Mubarak, adding that nobody approved of the killing of innocent civilians in the US on Sept. 11.
“We should not attribute violence to Islam, since there is no link between the two. Violence is found everywhere, as was the case with the Oklahoma bombing or the attack carried out by the American lawyer who killed eight lawyers in a US courtroom with an automatic weapon,” the president said.
But violence in Palestine, according to the president, is caused by the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian lands and the siege imposed on Palestinian villages and cities, “where people are left with no work or money to spend on their food, clothes, medical treatment or schools for their children.”
“This situation leads to despair among people and forces them to resort to violence," he said.
“Israel and the whole world should understand this and that we should seek peace only so that violence will come to a halt and people regain their rights,” added the president.
The president said that he “felt no initiative on the part of [Israeli Prime Minister] Sharon’s government regarding the resumption of peace negotiations...This government seizes every opportunity to spark violence when the situation calms down.”
Mubarak told the clerics, who represent the top Sunni authority in the Islamic World, that the resistance operations carried out by Palestinians to restore their lands constituted a legitimate national struggle against occupation.
This position, he said, had prompted individuals and organizations he did not name to send letters to him protesting against what they called “considering the killing of civilians inside Israel a legal act of resistance.”
That is why he had always called for an international conference to define terrorism and make a clear distinction between that and legitimate fighting against occupation, the president stressed.
“Terrorism should be accurately and properly defined. Egypt has been demanding this since 1984, and I myself have called for an international conference on terrorism. The differences over the assessment of fighting and operations in the Occupied Territories have always stood as an obstacle in the way of this idea.” – Albawaba.com
