Islamic Jihad Slams Peace Talks at Mass Gaza rally

29/10/2010 The Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement called on Friday for an end to peace talks with Israel and celebrated armed struggle at a rally in Gaza City attended by tens of thousands of supporters.

"Today we sound the alarm and warn that there will be a third Nakba (Catastrophe) because of the determination to pursue the path of negotiations with the enemy," the group's leader Ramadan Shalah told the crowd.

The situation "demands the complete withdrawal from the negotiations with the enemy, ending the Palestinian divide and uniting behind jihad and resistance," Shalah said by telephone from his base in Damascus.

Supporters waving Palestinian flags and the black banners of the Resistance group packed Gaza City's Kuteiba Square as senior officials gave speeches beneath massive portraits of slain Palestinian leaders from different groups.

Senior officials from Hamas and other factions walked across a large Israeli flag on the way to their seats at the rally, in which supporters chanted: "Death, death to America! Death, death to Israel!"

The rally came just days after the 15th anniversary of the assassination of Islamic Jihad's founder Fathi Shiqaqi, who was martyred in Malta in an attack blamed on Israel's Mossad spy agency.
(AFP)