Arafat Vows to Continue Battling for Sovereignty Over East JerusalemPalestinian leader Yasser Arafat vowed on Sunday that the Palestinian people will "continue to battle for sovereignty over Jerusalem," making it the capital of their future independent state.Jerusalem is "in danger" due to Israel's illegal practices to judaize the holy city and its attempts to impose such solutions on the Palestinians, which will fail to secure Palestinian national rights, Arafat said while addressing the opening ceremony of the 114th session of the Arab League Foreign Ministerial Council here. But "the Palestinian people who have long history of resistance and uprising will carry on with the struggles to recover East Jerusalem," he stressed. The Palestinian-Israeli peace talks are "at a decisive crossroad," Arafat said. The two-day Arab foreign ministers meeting will focus discussions on the Middle East peace process, especially Jerusalem, in a bid to reach a common Arab position on supporting the Palestinians' negotiations with Israel. The Palestinians will not accept any settlement that will not guarantee the return of the Islamic holy sites, Al-Aqsa mosque, Islam's third holiest site, in particular, the Palestinian leader said. He underlined that peace will not be realized in the Middle East if the Palestinians can not secure the legitimate national right to establish an independent state with Jerusalem as the capital. Jerusalem lies at the heart of the Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations. Israel occupied Arab East Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast War and later declared the whole of the city its "eternal and indivisible capital," a claim never recognized by the international community. The Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state. |
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