Palestinian Urges Efforts for Peace
Palestinian dissident Abu Zaim was quoted Sunday as calling on Palestinians to suspend armed struggle against Israel and direct their efforts toward a peaceful settlement of the Middle East crisis.
Abu Zaim, interviewed in Amman, Jordan, by the Emirates daily newspaper Al Ittihad, said Palestinians should be prepared to take up arms again if peaceful efforts fail. But he was also quoted as saying that “all of us should look for peace because the armed struggle will not serve our cause within the existing Arab and international circumstances.”
“We should do so in order not to burden the Palestinian people with shouldering the responsibility of hindering peace and associating them with terrorism,” he said.
Abu Zaim, who was expelled from Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat’s Fatah guerrilla faction in April, heads what he calls a corrective movement and has been named commander in chief by a group of about 400 supporters.
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