By Xinhua,
Cairo : Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has accused “some” Arab countries of being “complicit” with Israel on its recent military offensive in the Gaza Strip that killed more than 1,400 Palestinians, according to an audio tape broadcast by the pan-Arab al-Jazeera TV channel Saturday.
“It has been clear that some Arab leaders were complicit with the Zionists against our people,” bin Laden said in the short audio recording, without naming any Arab countries.
He said that Arab leaders were “hypocrites”, and “liberating Jerusalem needed honest Arab leadership” to fight and liberate the Arab people.
Bin Laden called the Israeli attack on Gaza as “Gaza’s holocaust”, saying it was a “historic event and a tragedy” and the Arab world needed a “devoted committee of scholars from the Islamic world to establish an advisory body” on the future of the region, “not leadership that is formed by hypocrites”.
He also said that Al Qaeda would “go to Jordan from the sea to the river to liberate Palestine”, according to al-Jazeera.
The audio tape’s authenticity could not be verified as the Doha-based satellite TV did not say from where it obtained the recording.
This latest tape has been the second of its kind by bin Laden in two months focused on Gaza. In the previous one in January, he also called for jihad against Israel.
The Israeli army waged a 22-day military operation against Gaza Strip that ended Jan 18, which it said was aimed at avenging rocket fire from Gaza at Israel. More than 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed during the offensive.