New tape: Bin Laden vowed today to keep up the fight against Israel

Osama bin Laden issued threats today against Israel on its 60th anniversary in a new audio tape released on an extremist website.

The al Qaeda leader vowed to continue the fight against the Jewish state and its allies.

"We will continue, God permitting, the fight against the Israelis and their allies ... and will not give up a single inch of Palestine as long as there is one true Muslim on earth," Bin Laden said in the tape posted on an Islamist website.

He said the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was at the heart of the Muslim battle with the West and had been an inspiration to the 19 suicide terrorists who carried out the September 11 attacks on U.S. cities in 2001.

The Saudi-born militant attacked the Western media for allegedly painting Israelis as victims and displaced Palestinians as terrorists.

Bin Laden – whose whereabouts have been unknown since the 9/11 attacks he is thought to have instigated – also mocked peace efforts which he said had been going on for 60 years but had failed to establish a Palestinian state.

The deployment of an international force in southern Lebanon proved the West backed and protected Israel, he said.

The taped speech is addressed to "Western peoples" and entitled "The Causes of Conflict on the 60th Anniversary of the State of Israeli Occupation."

The authenticity of the tape could not immediately be verified but the voice sounded like Bin Laden.