Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat vowed at an Islamic summit on Sunday that his people would carry on their uprising until the end of Israeli occupation, despite the high cost in human lives and financial losses.
"Our people are now more than ever determined to pursue their struggle in the Al-Aqsa uprising," he told the summit, referring to the Jerusalem mosque which is the third holiest site in Islam.
"It is an uprising for liberty and independence to shake off the clutches of occupation," he said in a speech at the gathering of the 56-member Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) in the Qatari capital.
"The Palestinian people know the importance of the sacrifices they have to make to realise this objective," Arafat said.
Palestinians are "confident that all Arab and Islamic peoples and states and their friends in the world stand beside them and support their resistance and fair struggle," he said.
"This solidarity ... is a message to the world that there will not be peace in the region without a settlement guaranteeing the national rights of Palestinians, the return of refugees, self-determination and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital."
His fighting speech was peppered with calls for Muslims and Christians to unite in defense of Jerusalem, as three Palestinian Christian clerics in his delegation sat among the participants from the Islamic world.
"Their presence here today with use at this Islamic summit is an embodiment of the Islamic-Christian unity and brotherhood among our people," said the Palestinian leader.
"Holy Jerusalem, its holy sites and streets have been turned into a military garrison of the Israeli occupation army," he charged.
He said the financial losses of the six-week-old uprising that has cost more than 200 lives, almost all Palestinians, amounted to more than 900 million dollars because of Israel's blockade of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
More than 9,000 people had been injured and around 380,000 Palestinian workers had lost their jobs, Arafat said.
He called for Muslim nations of the world "to alleviate the burden of this siege" by opening their labor market to the Palestinians, by boosting trade and investing in the Palestinian territories.
Turning to Iraq, Arafat called for a lifting of the UN embargo in force since its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
"The people of brotherly Iraq have suffered, and are still suffering, under an unjust siege imposed against them," he said, calling for the OIC to help end the embargo -- DOHA (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
