Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani says Muslims should not allow the Palestinian issue to be sidelined by regional disputes.
In a meeting with Palestinian Ambassador Salah al-Zawawi in Tehran on Sunday, Rafsanjani said Israel wants to divert attention away from Palestinians, the most oppressed people of the world who live in constant fear and insecurity, so that it can continue perpetrating crimes against them, IRNA reported.
"Some Islamic countries have completely forgotten the Palestinian issue, as if Israel is not a dangerous phenomenon in the region."
Expressing regret over actions by some Islamic governments against other Muslims, he said, "The oppressed people of Palestine fight the armed-to-the-teeth Israelis by using stones and knives and get martyred, while some Muslim countries are at each other's throats."
Pointing to Iran's firm policy to back the Palestinians' rights, the chairman of the Expediency Council expressed hope that Islamic states would wake up and remember that all Muslims should help Palestinians.
Rafsanjani criticized the west for its role in the mass immigration of the Zionists from Europe to Palestine during and after Second World War, stressing that westerns "lit a match and set the Palestinians' lives on fire by their wrongdoings."
The senior cleric pointed to the strong and unreasonable opposition of Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu to the nuclear negotiations between Iran and major world powers and described it as an opportunity to prove to the westerners the legitimacy of the Palestinians' campaign against the Zionists.
Zawawi said the Zionist regime's atrocities against Palestinians, committed with US support, everyday take on new dimensions, in contravention of international laws.
Clashes between Palestinian protestors and Israeli security forces across the occupied territories have flared up in recent weeks.
