Ikhwanweb :: The Muslim Brotherhood Official English Website

Salah: Razing homes in J’lem aimed to pave the way for more tunnels and temples

Sheikh Ra’ed Salah, the head of the Islamic Movement in the 1948 occupied lands, said Friday that the Israeli escalation of demolishing Palestinian homes in occupied Jerusalem is aimed to pave the way for the building of more tunnels and synagogues.

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Sheikh Ra’ed Salah, the head of the Islamic Movement in the 1948 occupied lands, said Friday that the Israeli escalation of demolishing Palestinian homes in occupied Jerusalem is aimed to pave the way for the building of more tunnels and synagogues.

During a khutba (sermon) delivered in Al-Bustan neighborhood, Sheikh Salah stressed that the defense of the Aqsa Mosque is a great honor for him despite the constant harassment he is exposed to by the Israeli occupation authority (IOA).

He talked about desecrating the sanctity of the holy city and Mosque in the name of the "distorted Jewish religion" and how Jewish rabbis were issuing religious edicts proscribing the unforbidden and spreading malevolence and injustice.

The Palestinian leader highlighted the issue of the Sheik Jarrah neighborhood and settler’s allegations about their ownership of Palestinian homes there since 1948, noting that the history indicates that this neighborhood was at the time uninhabited orchards until the UNRWA in 1956 built homes for a number of Palestinian citizens.

The leader pointed out that the US still funds the construction of hundreds of settlement units in Jerusalem, and he condemned the French political moves towards settlement expansion as acrobatic movement which can never stop the Zionist Judaization schemes.

For his part, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the secretary-general of the organization of the Islamic conference, strongly denounced the Israeli government for intending to build 900 settlement units in east Jerusalem.

In a press release published Thursday by Quds Press, Ihsanoglu said the recent Israeli settlement schemes are aimed to isolate the holy city from its Arab and Palestinian environs.

He also warned of the gravity of the situation in Jerusalem and the repeated attempts to attack the Islamic holy places there, calling on the international community to shoulder its responsibilities and pressure Israel to halt its violations against international law.

For its part, the democratic front for the liberation of Palestine (DFLP) slammed the Israeli government for ignoring international calls for stopping settlement expansion in east Jerusalem.

The front called in a statement on the Arab states to stop all forms of overt and covert communications with Israel and to assume their historic and moral responsibilities to stop these Israeli violations.

The DFLP underscored that the Arab states and the Palestinian Authority (PA) are demanded to resort to the UN Security Council in order to take a binding decision to halt settlement expansion, pursuant to chapter seven of the UN charter.

It also urged the administration of US president Barack Obama and the international community to take action and pressure Israel to stop fully its settlement activities.