Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad urged Palestinians to keep up their armed struggle against Israel a day after Israeli and Palestinian leaders agreed to continue US-backed peace talks.
Ahmadinejad said that the negotiations, seeking to end a conflict that has raged for six decades, would once again fail. He criticised some Muslim leaders for not providing all-out support to the Palestinians in their revolt against Israel.
"Palestine's issue cannot be resolved through talks with the enemies of the Palestinian nation. Resisting is the only way to rescue the Palestinians," Ahmadinejad told worshippers at Tehran University.
"How can these talks succeed when the mediators are those who created this conflict," he added. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas have agreed to meet again on September 14-15 with Hillary Clinton also present.
In Gaza, whose Islamist rulers are backed by Iran, several thousand Hamas and Islamic Jihad supporters rallied to mark Jerusalem Day and condemn the peace negotiations. They waved portraits of the late Ayatollah Khomeini and Iranian flags.
"Jerusalem cannot be liberated through negotiations or dialogue ... resistance and Jihad is the only way to liberate Jerusalem from the dirt of the Zionist occupation," said senior Hamas figure Ismail Al-Ashqar.
