Zawahiri calls for boycotting vote: Palestinian referendum
DUBAI, June 9: Al-Qaeda number-two Ayman al-Zawahiri on Friday urged Palestinians to reject a referendum called by Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas.
In a videotape aired on Al-Jazeera television, Al Zawahiri said: “I call upon them to reject any referendum on Palestine, because Palestine is not for bargaining or bidding,” addressing Muslims in general.
“Palestine was a land of Islam, and its liberation is the duty of every Muslim,” he added.
Mr Abbas plans to hold the controversial referendum on July 31.
At issue would be a document calling for a national unity government, an end to attacks in Israel and the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel on land conquered by the Jewish state in 1967.
In Gaza, the spokesman for the governing Hamas said Islamic forces had the right to express their position on the referendum, following the Zawahiri message.
“The Palestinian cause is both Arab and Islamic, and all Arab and Islamic forces have the right to express their view with regard to developments in the Palestinian territories,” Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said.
He repeated Hamas’s opinion that the referendum was unlawful, and amounted to ‘a coup d’etat’ against Hamas, which won the legislative elections in January.
Zawahiri’s video message appeared to have been recorded before Thursday’s killing in a US air strike of Al-Qaeda’s front man in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, as he praised him as ‘Islam’s hero’ in Iraq.
Zawahiri urged Muslims to support their ‘Palestinian brothers’.
He slammed Arab leaders for not helping the Palestinians financially after international donors cut aid to the Palestinian Authority following Hamas’s election victory.
“Arab leaders... did not dare to fulfil (even) one month’s (financial) needs of the Palestinians because orders were already issued by the Caesar of Washington,” he said, referring to US President George Bush.
Zawahiri also condemned the Arab peace initiative to normalise relations with Israel in return for land, proposed in 2002 by then Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, who has since acceded to the throne.
He mocked the Saudi monarch, calling him ‘the custodian of the American monotheistic ideology’ in reference to Saudi Arabia’s strong links with the United States.
Zawahiri, like Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, has a 25-million-dollar bounty on his head.
The Egyptian-born radical, who had become the de facto spokesman of Al-Qaeda due to seldom appearances by Osama bin Laden, blamed US interference in his home country for the strict government measures against judges.
“What you witness today of (government) measures against you is part of the promised American reform plan,” he said, addressing Egyptian judges who have waged an aggressive campaign seeking independence from the executive.
“You will not become independent. The United States and Israel simply do not want that,” he said, adding that Egypt is occupied and ‘will never be liberated until it applies the Shariat law’.—AFP
