GAZA CITY, 21 February 2007 — The Palestinian Parliament urged Arab states yesterday to cut ties with Israel in protest at excavation work near Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third holiest site which has triggered Muslim protests.
The Palestinian Legislative Council also called on the United Nations Security Council to pressure Israel to safeguard Islamic and Christian sites in Jerusalem.
The council said Arab states should “sever diplomatic and economic ties (with Israel) and not establish new ones” in response to the excavation.
Few Arab countries have formal ties with Israel. Egypt and Jordan signed peace treaties with the Jewish state and have diplomatic relations, while some Gulf Arab states have lower level contacts.
Israel says the work near Al-Aqsa aims to salvage artifacts before construction of a pedestrian bridge leading up to a religious compound sacred to both Muslims and Jews.
But the work has angered Arabs and Muslims who fear it could damage foundations of the 1,300-year-old mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City, captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East War.
The legislative council said Arab and Muslim leaders should take measures to protect sacred Muslim sites and called for urgent summit meetings of the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference to pressure Israel.
Muslim suspicion over Israeli actions intensified this week when Israeli Antiquities Authority archaeologist Yuval Baruch said storm and earthquake damage in 2004 had exposed remains at the site that could be from an ancient Muslim school. The director of the Waqf, a Jordanian-backed body that oversees Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem, said the fact the discovery was not announced at the time showed Israel wanted to “destroy the Islamic character of the city.”
Sheikh Raed Salah, an Israeli Arab campaigner who has led protests against the excavations, called for a new uprising to protest against what he called an “Israeli crime.”
Meanwhile, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said yesterday that his summit with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was “difficult and tense” but not a failure.
The Jerusalem meeting was “difficult and tense but it was not a failure and it will be followed by other meetings,” Abbas told Jordan’s state-run Petra news agency after briefing King Abdallah on the talks.
Also yesterday, Hamas said it still hoped Washington would soften its position toward the Palestinian unity government.
— With input from agencies
