OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (PIC)– The Israeli occupation authority (IOA) released Sheikh Raed Salah the leader of the Islamic Movement in the 1948 areas and his comrades after detaining them for few hours on Wednesday for protesting the excavations at the Aqsa Mosque in occupied Jerusalem.
The IOA ordered Sheikh Salah not to come near to the holy site for ten days but the Sheikh affirmed that he would head to the holy site on Thursday in response to calls by the Islamic Movement to the Palestinian masses.
He said that regardless of the order he was still insistent that the IOA is demolishing an important part of the holy Aqsa and that it is an occupation authority that has no sovereignty whatsoever on the holy site which is solely a Palestinian Arab Islamic right.
The IOA claimed that the Islamic leader was inciting Muslims against the excavations at the Aqsa.
Khaled Zabarka the lawyer of the Sheikh told court that Israel was the one inciting violence through its destruction of parts of the holy site.
For its part the Hamas Movement on Wednesday denounced the IOA arrest of Sheikh Salah and his colleagues.
Fawzi Barhum the Hamas spokesman in the Gaza Strip said that the arrest was meant to cover up for the conspiracy against the Aqsa Mosque.
He appealed to the Palestinians to unite in defense of the third holiest shrine in Islam and urged the Arab and Muslim rulers and ruled to shoulder their duties in protecting the Aqsa Mosque.
