Zionists’ Questioning of Al-Aqsa Preacher Sparks Condemnation in Palestine
On Sunday morning, the Zionist forces raided the house of Sheikh Akrama Sabri, imam and preacher of Al-Aqsa Mosque, urging him to come to an intelligence center of the regime.
In a statement, the Palestinian Prisoners Society said police handed Sabri an order to show up for questioning at al-Masqubiyya detention center in West Jerusalem. The NGO said the preacher will be questioned by Israel’s internal security service, Shin Bet.
The move has been condemned by Palestinian groups including Hamas.
In a phone conversation with Sabri, chairman of the political bureau of the Palestinian Hamas Ismail Haniyeh slammed the 6-hour-long arrest of the top cleric as an aggression against senior authorities of Quds.
Voicing support for the preacher, Haniyeh said that all the Palestinian nation stand beside the clerics to defend Quds, al-Aqsa, and the mosque’s Islamic identity.
In a separate statement, Hamas spokesman Muhammad Hamadeh condemned the move, adding that the Israeli regime seeks to limit clerics of Quds so that it can perform hostile policies regarding Al-Aqsa Mosque.
In addition, Al-Quds' Islamic Waqf Council expressed support for the senior cleric, noting that all the buildings and spaces of al-Aqsa Mosque compound belongs to Muslims. No one can bar Palestinian Muslims from praying in the holy mosque, added the statement.
A lower Israeli court in al-Quds had issued a ruling, saying that holding of Jewish “silent prayers” in al-Aqsa “cannot be considered a criminal act”.
The decision drew severe condemnation by Palestinian people and groups and also from some other countries. Faced with the Palestinians’ fury, an upper Israeli court upheld the ban on Jewish prayers at the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in the occupied Old City of al-Quds.
Later, Judge of the district court in al-Quds, Aryeh Romanov, on Friday confirmed that Jews are barred from worshiping openly at the site, and only Muslims are permitted to pray there.
The compound, Islam’s third-holiest site, is located in the Old City of East al-Quds, which the Israeli regime occupied as part of the entire Palestinian territory of the West Bank during a war in 1967.
The regime has been dotting the territory with hundreds of illegal settlements ever since the occupation.
Israeli settlers already storm the mosque’s compound at least twice every day under full protection of the regime’s forces.
