CAIRO: East Jerusalem is the future capital of Palestine said Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit, speaking on the 40th anniversary of the 1967 Six-Day War to the Arab Affairs Committee at the Peoples’ Assembly.
Teary-eyed Aboul Gheit added that there will be no giving up on East Jerusalem and that the Arab- Israeli conflict will not end unless it is taken back.
He added that the “historic impasse Israel experiences today is a result of occupying Arab lands, the resistance of the Palestinian people, and the condemnation of Israeli violations and practices in the occupied lands by the international community.
Aboul Gheit also fired a broadside towards Israeli celebrations of the 1967 war, saying that if Israel wants to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the unification of Jerusalem, it is forgetting 40 years of resistance and refusal of defeat.
The foreign minister also stated that the 40th anniversary of the October War of 1973 was coming up in 2013, and was preceded by Egyptian diplomatic efforts to garner international support and buy time to rebuild Egypt’s armed forces.
Meanwhile, Parliament President Fathi Sorour objected to the idea of commemorating the anniversary of the defeat. We should celebrate victories, not defeats, he told MPs.
Following the meeting, committee head General Saad El Gammal read a statement to the parliament s general assembly saying that although Egypt has reclaimed its land, it won t leave behind the concerns of the Arab nation, specifically the liberation of all occupied territories.
During the same parliamentary session, MP Hassan Ibrahim, also a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, asked if Egypt is exporting gas to Israel. Ibrahim demanded Minister of Petroleum Sameh Fahmy attend a parliamentary session to explain the issue.
In response, Minister of Judicial Affairs Mufid Shehab El Din said the 2005 memorandum of understanding regarding gas exports between Egypt and Israel hasn t entered the operational phase yet.
He added that the government isn t the party involved; companies export gas, not governments.
On the same day, remembering 40 years of occupation, Palestinian President and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas said that the Palestinians are on the verge of civil war, referring to the conflict engulfing Palestinian politics and the two ruling groups Fatah and Hamas.
Fatah and Hamas are part of the same unity government, but persistent infighting is marring any chances of bipartisan power-sharing.
Talking in a televised speech on Tuesday, Abbas said: “Regarding our internal situation, what concerns us all is the chaos, and more specifically, being on the verge of civil war.
Attempts to put a stop to the bloodshed is ongoing, Abbas said, because he realizes “that what is equal to the danger of occupation, or even more, is the danger of infighting.
Forty years ago on the June 5, 1967, Israel conducted a preemptive strike against Arab air forces on the ground, destroying 400 planes. This was the first strike in what has come to be known as the Six-Day War.
At the end of these six days, Israel had taken a sizable amount of Arab lands including Sinai in Egypt, the Golan Heights in Syria and wrestled the West Bank and the old city of Jerusalem from Jordanian control.
However, the common consensus is that Israel’s emphatic victory over those six days did more harm than good for the Israeli cause.
Speaking on Israeli radio, former cabinet minister Shulamit Aloni said that Israel failed to capitalize on these gains to make peace with its neighbors, a failure which continues until today.
“We reached such a state of euphoria and such excitement that we were blinded, because with such a success we could have brought peace, she said. “Today we can make peace and we aren t trying.
