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Hizbollah says Israel 'profiting' from US attacks |
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| BEIRUT (AFP) — The leader of Lebanon's Shiite Muslim radical
Hizbollah group, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, has charged that Israel is
taking advantage of the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States to crack
down on the Palestinian Intifada, or uprising.
“Israel is profiting from these attacks to repress the Intifada,” Nasrallah told thousands of supporters in a ceremony at a Beirut suburb late Friday to mark the first anniversary of the fighting in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. “This commemoration is taking place in a context which has shaken the world and unfortunately eclipsed the importance of the Intifada,” he said, according to witnesses who spoke with AFP. However, he called on Arab and Muslim countries not to support the anti-terrorism coalition that the United States is building to retaliate for the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington. “America, which wants to fight terrorism, supports Israel, the biggest terrorist country in the world,” he said. “Arabs and Muslims in the world must not help the United States in its aggression against the Afghan people or against Muslims,” he added. The United States has threatened to launch military strikes against Afghanistan's ruling Taleban regime for harbouring the main suspect in the attacks, Saudi-born militant Osama Ben Laden. Earlier in the day, some 3,000 women affiliated with Hizbollah threw stones on Friday on northern Israel to mark the anniversary of the Palestinian uprising. The women gathered stones for half an hour before hurling them at an Israeli army post on the Fatima Gate border point between Lebanon and Israel, an AFP correspondent said. Hizbollah, which is on the US blacklist of “terrorist organisations,” opposes the peace process with Israel and continues to encourage the Palestinians to pursue their Intifada which started on Sept. 28, 2000.
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