Dozens of Nasserist-leaning lawyers staged a demonstration before Egyptian Bar Association headquarters in downtown Cairo on Tuesday to protest the ongoing Israeli siege of Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque. Demonstrators called for the expulsion of Israel's ambassador to Egypt and condemned what they called "Egypt's silence" over recent Israeli violations of the mosque compound. "Shame, shame…Egypt's silence is shame," they chanted. Others shouted: "Liberation comes through weapons, not through negotiations with the assassin." Some demonstrators raised banners proclaiming, "We shall not abandon Al-Aqsa." A number of political activists, including members of the frozen Islamist-oriented Labor Party and the Popular Committee for the Support of the Palestinian People, took part in the protest. "The Arab people's adherence to the culture of resistance is the only way to reclaim Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque," Saeed Abdel-Ghani, Secretary-General of the bar association's Nasserist bloc, said. "Legitimacy should be restored to the Palestinian resistance under the Palestinian Liberation Organization and arms should be taken up once again," he added. "Effort should also be made to unify Palestinian ranks." "The Zionist assault on Al-Aqsa is part of a plot aimed at establishing an exclusively Jewish state, seizing Palestinian property, expelling Arabs resident in Israel and continuing settlement activity both inside and outside of Jerusalem," Abdel-Ghani said. Translated from the Arabic Edition.
