OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (PIC)– Chief of the Israeli occupation police Moshe Karadi has issued an order closing the Commodor hotel in the eastern part of the occupied Jerusalem city in a bid to block a pro-Aqsa Mosque conference organized by the Aqsa foundation.
Muslim and Christian prominent figures including Sheikh Raed Salah the head of the Islamic Movement in the 1948-occupied Palestinian lands archimandrite Atallah Hanna the spokesman of the Greek Orthodox church in Jerusalem and Sheikh Mohammed Hussein the Mufti of Jerusalem and Palestine among other personalities flocked into the hotel to sign an “oath to preserve holy shrines in Jerusalem”.
The police justified the closure by alleging that the conference was organized by Hamas which is an “outlawed” Movement; but organizers of the conference scorned those allegations and categorically denied them.
The foundation that caters for Muslim holy shrines in Palestine accused Karadi of fabricating reasons to justify his step adding that the foundation reserves the right to hold the conference any time in the occupied city.
For his part Salah described the Israeli step as “part of the Israeli scheme against the Aqsa Mosque and other Muslim and Christian holy sites”.
Meanwhile Arab Knesset (Israeli parliament) Sheikh Abbas Zakkor tabled a motion to question Israeli premier Ehud Olmert over the continued Israeli excavations at the Aqsa Mosque’s western wall.
“Why does the Israeli authority continue those diggings and what is exactly the purpose of those demolition works and when will it stop?” questioned Zakkor.
He charged the Israeli occupation authorities were deceiving the whole world and attempting to portray the diggings as simple matter asserting that what is going on was clear aggression on Muslim holy shrines that calls for serious Arab and Muslim reaction to block it.
