Palestinians gathered across the West Bank Saturday to commemorate the assassination of the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), AFP correspondents reported.
Some 2,000 people gathered in a Ramallah park to remember Abu Ali Mustafa on the traditional 40 days after his death. The PFLP secretary general was assassinated in an August 27 Israeli helicopter attack in the West Bank.
Red PFLP flags and banners were waved as Nabil Amr, minister of parliamentary affairs, spoke on behalf of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, amid Palestinian government officials from across party lines, and an Arab member of the Israeli parliament, Azmi Bishara.
Amr called for shows of unity as the world's eyes turn toward the Palestinians after US President George W. Bush restated earlier this week his support for the formation of a Palestinian state.
"The Palestinian people are again on the world's agenda. We must be strongly united to continue our struggle," Amr said.
"We know that the world does not care about nations that are not strong. To be strong we must have tight relations with the Arab world," he added.
Meanwhile, in an Islamic Jihad rally on the other side of Ramallah, anti-US and Israeli demonstrators tromped on Israeli flags, painted with "U.S.A." in the center, among a crowd of around 200 angry militants.
In the West Bank city of Nablus, 500 people marched through the city center, some wearing red masks and firing Kalashnikov rifles into the air. Many chanted, "Israel is a terrorist nation."
Mustafa, whose real name was Mustafa Al Zibri, came from a family of Muslim peasants in the village of Araba in the northern West Bank.
At the age of 63, he was considered a pragmatist after deciding to return to the West Bank in September 1999 despite the PFLP's refusal to recognize the 1993 Oslo peace accords between Israel and Arafat.
"His liquidation was part of our action against people who are actively involved in terrorism", said Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's spokesman, Avi Pazner following the assassination.
He was "an extremely dangerous terrorist who had nothing to prove," he said.
The Palestinians accuse Israel of liquidating some 50 activists since the Intifada erupted in September last year, but the Mustafa strike was the first time the army killed the leader of a Palestinian political movement -- RAMALLAH, West Bank (AFP)
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
