ISMAILIA, EGYPT: President Hosni Mubarak, the head of the only Arab country to have diplo mastitis with Israel, warned that if the Israelis refused to reverse their annexation of East Jerusa Jem, there could never be peace in the region.
While the Egyptian leader believes that Israel may eventually agree to concede some territory to Palestinians and its other Arab neighbors in the peace talks begin in Madrid on Wednesday, he worries that the Israelis have failed to grasp the symbolic and religious significance of East Jerusalem to Arabs. It is the site of Al Aksa Mosque, Islam’s third holiest shrine. Generation after generation will focus on the holy places,” he said, seated in a wicker chair on the patio of the presidential retreat along the Suez Canal. The religious fundamentalists are working the issue now to accelerate this. It is going to create a hell of
a lot of problems, especially with the difficult economic situation in the Muslim countries. There will be no shortage of volunteers ready to die for this cause’.
Mubarak, who was President Anwar el-Sadat’s Vice President during the negotiations with the Israelis leading to the 1979 Camp David accords, which brought peace between Egypt and Israel, said the current situation is the last chance for peace.
New York Times
Article extracted from this publication >> November 8, 1991
