MUFTI: NO JEWISH PRAYERS IN "PALESTINE'S" JERUSALEM

Security of Jerusalem Holy Sites Threatened - Mike Seid
Dore Gold, former Israeli ambassador to the UN and Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs president, has a warning for the religious faithful. "Taking the holy sites of Jerusalem which are presently protected and secure and putting them under the uncertainty of Palestinian rule or of some poorly defined special regime for the Holy Basin is to put their future in great doubt." At the planned summit in Annapolis, the fate of this special city appears to be on the table.

"Jerusalem has been a part of Jewish faith and religious practice since the time of King David and King Solomon," he says. "The most widely practiced ceremonies in Judaism today, the Passover Seder and the Ne'ila prayer of Yom Kippur, close with the declaration 'Next year in Jerusalem.' The call for rebuilding Jerusalem is a part of Jewish daily prayer and of the grace after meals. Thus Jerusalem is at the heart of Jewish religious consciousness."

"Christians treasure the importance of Jerusalem, but their main institutions developed elsewhere," Gold says, referring to Rome and Constantinople. "For Islam, Jerusalem has special meaning. But Jerusalem never appears in the Koran. And the proper place of pilgrimage for the haj is Mecca, with Medina being the second most holy city in Islam. Jerusalem was never the seat of the Islamic caliphate." "Only a free and democratic Israel can protect Jerusalem for all faiths," he concludes.

Dr. Ikrema Sabri, former mufti of Jerusalem, says, "Islam said the city was to be under the authority of Muslims because it is a Muslim city." Despite this week's findings of First Temple remains on the Mount by the Muslim Wakf, Sabri argues, "There was never a Jewish temple on Al-Aksa and there is no proof that there was ever a temple." Similarly, Sabri maintains that the Western Wall "is not part of the Jewish temple, it is just the Western Wall of the mosque," he says. "There is not a single stone with any relation at all to the history of the Hebrews." Islamic leaders were not always so certain. The Supreme Muslim Council in 1930 wrote that the Temple Mount's "sanctity dates from earliest times. Its identity with the site of Solomon's Temple is beyond dispute." (Jerusalem Post)

Mufti: No Jewish prayers in 'Palestine's' Jerusalem by Stan Goodenough (JWN)
If Jerusalem is divided, and it's eastern part made the capital of "Palestine" - world Jewry will be forever cut off from the hope it has held onto for 2000 years, and be once and for all prohibited from ascending the Temple Mount and even from praying at the Western Wall.

This warning was clearly sounded in an interview the former PLO-appointed mufti of Jerusalem gave to The Jerusalem Post this week, excerpts of which were published Thursday.

Ikrema Sabri emphatically told the Post no Israelite temple had ever stood on the Temple Mount. What's more, the cleric insisted, the Western Wall - whose massive stones the entire world knows to have been laid by Herod the Great during the Roman occupation of the Land of Israel - had nothing to do with any temple either. "The wall is not part of the Jewish temple. It is just the western wall of the mosque. There is not a single stone with any relation at all to the history of the Hebrews. "It was always only a mosque - all 144 dunams, the entire area," Sabri said.

"No Jews have the right to pray there. ... No Jewish prayer. If the Jews want real peace, they must not do anything to try to pray on Al-Aqsa. Everyone knows that."

The Mufti's ranting underscored how the Muslim Arab effort to wrest Israel's holiest site from the Jewish people and entrench it under irreversible Islamic control is intensifying in the run-up to next-month's US-sponsored Middle East conference.

Washington is pushing for this conference, fully aware that the Arab side’s intent is to steal great chunks of Israel’s historic homeland for the creation of a juden-rein Palestinian state that will never tolerate Jewish and Christian worship on or near the Temple Mount – or at any other site deemed sacred to Islam.