Jordan’s Foreign Minister Marwan Moasher said during an interview Monday that Palestinian suicide attacks were an inefficient weapon against Israeli occupation, adding that an Arab peace plan was a better tool.
"These operations have lost all international support for the Arabs, who are the only countries in the world to support them," Moasher told the Jordanian independent weekly Al-Hadath.
"We have a much more efficient weapon than martyr operations to end the Israeli occupation and that is the Arab peace plan," submitted by Saudi Arabia and adopted by an Arab League summit in Beirut in March, he said.
"We must be clear: our goal is the end of the occupation, not (anti-Israeli) resistance or even the intifada," he said. "The question that must now be raised is whether these (suicide) operations have served the Palestinian cause rather than if these operations were justified or conform with Sharia (Islamic law)," Moasher said.
Furthermore, Moasher accused Israel of having exploited the September 11 terror attacks on the United States "to tell the world that it was fighting terrorism like the United States".
"At the same time we (Arabs) kept silent and the result was that many countries consider that we were wrong and that (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon was right," in trying to eradicate suicide bombings, Moasher conveyed.
In addition, the Jordanian minister acknowledged that deep divisions remain throughout the Arab world over the usefulness of convening an international conference on the Middle East.
"There are two points of view in the Arab world. One is opposed to the conference because it will not meet Arab aspirations while the other believes that the details of the conference have not yet been finalized. "That is why we must act so that the terms of reference of this conference meet our demands," Moasher said. (Albawaba.com)
