RAMALLAH: Israeli Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch of rightist Israel Beiteinu party, who made headlines last week for racist remarks about Arabs, paid a visit to Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque yesterday, prompting condemnation from Palestinian religious leaders.
According to Aharonovitch’s media adviser, Tal Harel, he went to Islam’s third holiest site to review police deployments in the flashpoint area. He said the visit was a routine tour of the site, lasting some two hours. “The intention of the visit was to see how the police would deploy in case of an emergency,” Tal Harel said.
During the visit, Aharonovitch entered the mosque, which sits in a complex in the Old City known as Al-Haram Al-Sharif.
Israel captured the site in the 1967 war and annexed it with the rest of East Jerusalem, in a move not recognized internationally.
Aharonovitch said the visit was coordinated with Muslim authorities, a remark contradicted by the city’s leading cleric.
The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and Palestine Sheikh Mohammed Hussein responded angrily, calling the tour a “provocative entry to the holy site, which may complicate the sensitive situation.” The mufti said the visit was not coordinated in advance.
“He does not have the right to visit Al-Aqsa because it is an Islamic site and not a Jewish site, and it could ignite violence because the visit provokes the feelings of Muslims... It is an assault on an Islamic place,” Hussein said.
He reminded that the second Intifada, also called the Al-Aqsa uprising, was sparked on Sept. 28, 2000, by a controversial visit to Al-Aqsa Mosque by right-wing politician Ariel Sharon, who later became Israel’s prime minister.
Sheikh Azzam Al-Khatib, the director of the Waqf (endowment) Department in Jerusalem, said that the visit had not been coordinated in advance and that he did not know the reason for the tour.
The Arab Member of Israeli Talab El-Sana of United-Arab List party decried the visit as “a pathetic provocation.” “Aharonovitch is unwelcome at the Al-Aqsa Mosque and his purpose was to incense the Muslims and try to show them who’s in charge.”
“If the purpose of this visit is to provoke Muslims and try to show them who’s in charge, then he is trying to ignite a war and he will face the consequences of the visit,” said El-Sana.
It was Aharonovitch’s first visit as minister.
Last week, Arab opposition members of Israel’s parliament called for Aharonovitch to resign over comments he made during a meeting with police officers.
In television footage, the minister, responding to an undercover police agent who apologized for his dirty clothes, said with a laugh: “What do you mean dirty? You look like a real ‘Araboosh,’” a derogatory term for an Arab in Hebrew slang.
Aharonovitch apologized for the remark.
