Zawahri calls for holy war to free Palestine

CAIRO: Al Qaeda’s deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahri has called for a holy war to liberate Palestine in a message broadcast by Doha-based Al Jazeera satellite television on Wednesday.

“Those trying to liberate the land of Islam through elections based on secular constitutions ... will not liberate a grain of sand of Palestine,” Zawahri said.

The leader of Al Qaeda made the comments against the backdrop of a call by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas last Saturday for early elections in an attempt to defuse escalating conflicts between Fatah and the ruling Hamas.

During the short footage of a video tape, whose authenticity could not be independently confirmed, Zawahri called Abbas “America’s man in Palestine”, warning that if Palestinians accepted Abbas as their president, it would be “the end of holy war”.

Zawahri said that Palestinian elections would not free Palestinian land and would deal a blow to holy war against Israeli occupation.

Muslims’ retreating will not win the approval of the West despite their skilled manoeuvring and talking, he said.

The new message of Zawahri came two days after an Islamist militant website announced on Monday that Osama bin Laden’s second-in-command would soon release a new message.

In September, Zawahri released a video to mark the anniversary of Sep tember 11, terror attack in the US, calling US President George W Bush a “failure” for saying progress had been made in the war on terrorism.