-Caveat Lector-
Arab street demands new holy war
Mona Ziade
Senior Correspondent
Morocco recalled its diplomatic envoy from Tel Aviv on Friday and Qatar
came under pressure to sever its low-level ties with Israel as angry crowds
across the Arab world took to the streets, demanding open borders for a
holy war against the Jewish state.
The mounting outrage over Israel’s onslaught against the Palestinians
clashed with the Western world’s sympathies for Israel, dimming the
prospects of a coordinated international effort to spare the Middle East
another full-blown war.
Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Syria spearheaded regional diplomatic efforts to
head off a spread of violence to other countries, and governments found
themselves caught between inclinations to moderation and calls in the
streets for a jihad, or holy war.
“Following the latest events in the Palestinian territories, Morocco has
recalled its diplomatic representative in Tel Aviv, Talal Ghoufrani, for
consultation, pending assessment of the dangerous situation in the
region,” an official announcement said in Rabat.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa flew to Saudi Arabia as the streets
of Cairo filled with demonstrators calling for war against Israel the first
time such hard-line slogans have been raised in Egypt since the 1979
Camp David peace treat
Moussa was joined in Riyadh by his Syrian counterpart, Farouk al-Sharaa
and they headed straight to a closed-door meeting with Saudi Arabia’s
foreign minister Prince Saud al-Faisal.
Thousands of protesters rushed out of Friday prayers at Cairo’s Al-Azhar
Mosque to march in the streets to denounce Israel’s air, land and sea
attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza which followed the
lynching of two Israeli soldiers in Ramallah on Thursday.
“Where is the Egyptian Army?” they shouted as they burned the Israeli
and US flags. “Jihad, jihad, allow us to go to jihad,” they cried repeatedly.
In one incident, protesters who ran into one a side street started
throwing stones at police when they saw one of their number getting
arrested. Police released the man and the stoning stopped.
Last week, Egyptian riot police blocked all doors of the historic Al-Azhar
and banned protesters from marching in the street. But shocking
television scenes of Israeli attacks and the public rage it has drawn
apparently convinced security bodies in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab
world to allow the masses to vent their frustrations.
The mood in Jordan, which made peace with Israel in 1994, was similar,
and security forces displayed marked tolerance.
More than 3,000 people, including Islamist and opposition leaders,
marched to the prime minister’s office, demanding the ouster of Israel’s
ambassador to Amman. They tried to march on the heavily fortified Israeli
Embassy but were dispersed by police who threatened them with clubs.
But there was no repeat of the violence of the previous Friday, when
police used tear gas.
The leader of the Islamic Action Front, Hammam Saeed, called for jihad in
a sermon. “O Abdullah, O Abu Hussein, open up those bridges for us to
launch a jihad,” he said in an appeal to Jordan’s monarch.
Protesters in Oman, which severed its commercial links with Israel o
Thursday after Israel escalated its assaults on the Palestinians, demanded
that other Arab states follow suit.
“It is an unforgivable sin for Muslims to stand and watch the Palestinian
massacre at the hands of Israel,” one cleric told worshippers during a sermon
in Muscat. “A few million Israelis cannot stand a chance against 1 billion
Muslims when united.”
Demonstrators called for Qatar to follow in Oman’s footsteps. “If Oman
has done it than Qatar must do it,” they shouted.
Omani Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Youssef bin Alawi bin Abdullah
said: “What is happening now has nothing to do with peace. It is a case of
Israeli military pressure on Arabs to surrender.”
In Syria, police used tear gas to disperse some 2,000 angry
demonstrators who tried to reach the US Embassy in Damascus, but
allowed protests elsewhere in the capital. The demonstrators implored
presidents Bashar Assad and Emile Lahoud to open the borders for
attacks on the Jewish state, and burned US and Israeli flags. They also
set alight an effigy of Likud leader Ariel Sharon, whose visit to Al-Haram
Al-Sharif known to Jews as the Temple Mount on Sept. 28 sparked the
violence.
Damascus Radio warned that Barak’s proposal to form a unity
government with the hard-line Likud “will produce no result other than a
hardening in the Arab position.”
It also criticized Washington for “not being up to the responsibilities
demanded of it in the peace process, because of its flagrant alignment
with Israel.”
Iran said Arabs had a duty to sever all links to Israel.
“The Prophet said no one is a true Muslim if he ignores a call for help. The
oppressed Palestinians are at this very moment crying out for help from
Muslims,” Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati told worshippers during Friday prayers
at Tehran University. “The least that is expected of Islamic countries is to
cut relations with Israel.”
Iran’s Foreign Ministry urged Islamic countries “to give wide support to
Palestinians to help them achieve their rights.”
Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said Tehran “expects international
bodies to take serious measures to prevent widespread attacks by the
Zionist military against innocent Palestinian civilians.”
Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi said he doubted that Arab leaders would
meet the aspirations of the masses at next week’s summit in Cairo.
“I’m not convinced of the usefulness of a summit,” he said in Riyadh, his
first official trip to the kingdom in 20 years.
Cyprus, which has often been struck by ricochets from the Arab-Israeli
conflict, tightened security around the Israeli Embassy and other
diplomatic missions in Nicosia. It also offered to host a proposed
Israeli-Palestinian summit sponsored by Egypt and the US.
Its political rival, Turkey, made a similar offer, as Turkish President Ahmet
Necdet Sezer said he was “extremely saddened” by the escalation of
violence in the Palestinian territories. He called on both sides to “stop and
not give in to provocations, no matter how difficult it might be.” With
agencies
• Arabs ‘must unite’ against Israel
• Camps call for right to fight in occupied Palestine
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