Qatar and Mauritania decided on Friday to “suspend” their relations with Israel, at an emergency Arab assemblage in Doha called to discuss the Israeli onslaught on Gaza, a Mauritanian diplomat said. “Mauritania and Qatar have decided during a meeting behind closed doors to suspend their ties with Israel,” the diplomat, who requested anonymity, said. Egypt and Jordan are the only Arab countries who have signed peace treaties with Israel and have Israeli embassies. Mauritania has had diplomatic ties with the Jewish state since 1999, while Qatar has hosted an Israeli trade bureau since 1996. Mauritania called back its ambassador in Israel in the wake of the attacks Israel launched on the Gaza Strip on Dec. 27. The Iranian and Syrian presidents, along with exiled chief of Hamas Khaled Meshaal, called at the meeting's opening session on all countries to sever their ties with the Jewish state. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appealed on nations to boycott all Israeli products and also called for the prosecution of Israeli leaders by the international court of justice for “crimes” against the Palestinians. Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad said his country had halted unofficial peace talks with Israel indefinitely, and that he considered the Arab peace initiative dead. “Resistance has become the only path to peace, which comes through returning rights from an enemy that only understands the language of force,” Assad said. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is not attending the summit – Meshaal had driven Abbas's forces from Gaza in June 2007. Meshaal told the meeting that it would not accept any ceasefire that did not provide for a full Israeli pullout and the opening of Gaza's borders, including the Rafah crossing with Egypt. “I assure you: despite all the destruction in Gaza, we will not accept Israel's conditions for a ceasefire,” he told a meeting of Arab and other leaders shortly before Hamas was invited to Cairo for a fresh round of talks. A senior West Bank Palestinian official slammed Qatar' for hosting the emergency Arab conclave, accusing him of using Palestinian “blood” for political gain. “Neither the emir of Qatar nor anyone else will decide the fate of the Palestinian people,” said Yasser Abed Rabbo, a senior official in Abbas's Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The PLO includes Abbas's secular Fatah party and several other Palestinian factions but not Hamas. “It appears the emir of Qatar has goals he wants to achieve by exploiting Palestinian blood,” said Abed Rabbo, who is close to Abbas.
