On Wednesday, a senior Palestinian Muslim cleric encouraged Muslims to visit Jerusalem, which breaks a tabboo against visiting the holy city since it would be perceived as normalizing relations with Israel.

According to the Jerusalem Post, "speaking at a press conference in Cairo, Sheikh Tayseer al-Timimi said Muslims should travel to Jerusalem and perform a pilgrimage to Muslim holy places in the disputed city, backtracking on an earlier edict."

Al-Timimi is quoted as saying, "I withdraw my fatwa (edict) and now ask all Muslims and (Arab) Christians to creep into Jerusalem for a visit, satisfaction and shopping."

The cleric urged the Islamic faithful to stay at the Palestinian hotels and frequent the Palestinian markets.

Nonetheless, his comments of praise for Jerusalem contradicts the sentiments of many of his fellow clerics, who continue to demand a ban on such tourism until a Palestinian state is formally established with east Jerusalem as its capital.

As reported by the Post, "Jerusalem's Al Aqsa mosque is one of Islam's most sacred shrines and Arabs and Muslims used to visit regularly to worship there until 1967."

Muslims living in Saudia Arabia and Syria are unlikely to heed the tourism call of al-Timimi, since the two nations refuse to maintain diplomatic relations with Israel.

Yet, al-Timimi's preaching comes amid reports that the United States is pleading with Arab countries to put forward some steps to normalize relations with Israel as an appeal for the Jewish state to revive the peace process with Palestinians.

George Mitchell, the US Mideast envoy, has supposedly proposed that Arab states reopen Israeli diplomatic missions to permit Israeli commercial planes to fly in their air space and grant entry to Israeli tourists. Egypt and Jordan are the only Arab states that permit this today.

To read the entire article from the Jerusalem Post, link here:

This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Comments (0)

Comment	smaller | bigger
Name
Write the displayed characters
Subscribe via email (Registered users only) I have read and agree to the Terms of Usage.
	Add Comment