Morsi's trial: The time to divide Al Aqsa Mosque?

As Egypt and the Arab nations are preoccupied with the start of the trial for President Mohamed Morsi, the first democratically elected Arab president who was deposed by a military coup only one year after taking office, Israel is taking advantage of the situation and started discussing a draft law in the Knesset on Monday that proposes to divide the Al-Aqsa Mosque amid objections by Christian and Muslim Palestinian organisations.

Israel’s Deputy Minister of Religious Affairs has submitted the draft law before the Knesset, which aims to divide the Al-Aqsa Mosque between Muslims and Jews, disrupting the status quo that currently prohibits Jews from praying in the mosque. The law proposes identifying dates and sites for Jews to perform individual and group prayers in the mosque.

Egypt’s Al-Ahram newspaper quoted Israeli sources as saying that several Knesset members, ministers and deputy ministers affiliated with the ruling coalition parties, including the right-wing Likud Party and the Jewish Home Party, have backed the “Temple Mount project” law similar to a former law that divided the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron city between Muslims and Jews.

Playing with fire

According to Al-Jazeera network, the project has stirred intense debate within the Israeli commission between members who support the law and those who oppose it. As a result, the commission has decided to postpone its recommendations until Israel’s higher rabbinates, who previously released an advisory opinion denying Jews entry to the Al-Aqsa mosque, are consulted.

Meanwhile, Arab MPs in the Knesset have warned that the project’s results will be catastrophic for everyone. Those MPs who departed from the deliberations in protest have invited Arab and Muslim countries with diplomatic relations with Israel to withdraw their representatives if Israel embarks on the project.

Arab and Muslim condemnations

Several Arab and Islamic organizations denounced those extremists storming the Al-Aqsa Mosque to demand that Jews pray there, while depriving Muslims of this right, when the bill to split the mosque was first introduced in September. The Palestinian National Council warned during its plenary session that Israeli aggressions against the Al-Aqsa Mosque aim to Judaise it before dividing it.

The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) also condemned the Israeli plans to divide the Al-Aqsa Mosque and in a press statement denounced “Jewish groups’ continued actions to storm the Al-Aqsa Mosque and to attack Muslim worshippers.”

Also in September, 81 Jordanian MPs demanded that the Jordanian government, which acts as custodian of Jerusalem’s holy sites, summon the Israeli ambassador in Amman to give him a strong message of protest against preventing Muslims from praying in the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

The Jordanian Parliament also released a statement denouncing the Knesset’s security committee, which approved the incursions of Al-Aqsa Mosque, saying that the Knesset allowed Jewish extremists and the Israeli government to storm the holy site during Jewish holidays, imposing a new status quo to divide the mosque before controlling it.

The Secretary General of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, has condemned the blockade Israel is imposing on the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the frequent attacks on worshippers in order to facilitate Jewish extremists entry into the Mosque’s yards.

The organisation pointed out that the attacks target one of the most sacred holy sites for Muslims and called to prevent their recurrence while blaming Israel for the consequences of such actions.

This is the translation of an item that first appeared on the Rassd New Network

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