Sunday, September 3 8:26 PM SGT

Arafat lashes out at Israel, warns that Jerusalem in "danger"
CAIRO, Sept 3 (AFP) -
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat lashed out at Israel in a key address to the Arab League here Sunday, warning that he would not make peace if Palestinian rule over Jerusalem is compromised.

"Jerusalem is in danger. We are at a decisive crossroads," Arafat told a meeting of Arab foreign ministers, accusing Israel of trying to move the goal posts of peace.

The Palestinian leaders complained that "weeks had passed" since the US-sponsored Camp David summit ended in failure July 25, "without the Israeli side budging from its stubborn position."

The deadlock in Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations showed no signs of easing as Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak said in Jerusalem he would do nothing on the peace track until he sees signs of flexibility from Arafat.

Arafat, for his part, charged that the Jewish state was trying to ignore the principle of land for peace and to "reduce peace to an empty shell."

Israel is trying "to make fairy tales more legitimate and real than the facts of history," he said at the opening session of the Arab League meeting which has been dubbed the "Jerusalem session."

"We will accept no solution that limits Palestinian sovereignty over (Jerusalem) and does not guarantee the return of the holy places, especially al-Haram al-Sharif," he said in an address at the Arab League.

Al-Haram al-Sharif, or the Noble Sanctuary, also known as the Al-Aqsa mosque compound, is the third holiest site in Islam.

The place is known to Jews as Temple Mount, the site of the Jewish temple destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD and whose last standing remnant is the Western Wall, the holiest site in Judaism.

"We will continue our battle for independence and sovereignty," the Palestinian leader added, evoking the Palestinian intifada, or uprising, against Israel which flared in the late 1980s.

He also insisted that any peace deal must secure the Palestinian "right to establish an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital."

Control over east Jerusalem and its holy places, which Israel captured in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, is the biggest stumbling block to efforts to forge a comprehensive peace accord between the two sides.

"Israel claims that Israeli law is higher than international law and the resolutions of international legitimacy which require Israel's complete withdrawal from ... the Palestinian territories including Jerusalem," he said.

Arafat added that the Palestinians would not sign an agreement acknowledging that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was over "until after all the rights of Arabs, Muslims and Christian in our lands have been reinstated."

Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Mussa said Saturday night that the meeting at the League's Cairo headquarters will "assert the unanimous Arab support for the Palestinian negotiations on Jerusalem and other matters."

The Arabs are insisting on Palestinian sovereignty over the eastern sector of Jerusalem, the city which both the Israelis and Palestinians want as their internationally recognised capital.

In addition to the Jerusalem question and the peace process, the Arab League ministerial council was also due to discuss other items of Arab League business.