Higher Presidential Committee for Church Affairs: Al-Aqsa is only for Muslims 

The Higher Presidential Committee for Church Affairs in Palestine yesterday reiterated that Al-Aqsa Mosque is only for Muslims alone.

Head of the committee, Ramzi Khoury, called for the concerned bodies to increase their efforts to protect Al-Aqsa Mosque which “is facing an existential danger targeting its legal, historical and religious status,” stressing that Jerusalem “is an occupied Palestinian city.”

“Al-Aqsa Mosque is a place for worship, peace and tranquillity, and it is being desecrated by the occupation authorities and settlers who turned it into a place for oppression and chasing worshippers.”

The occupation, he continued, “has turned the occupied city of Jerusalem and its neighbourhoods into a military base where Palestinians are being chased and persecuted.”

READ: Egypt calls for halting Israel escalation at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa complex

Khoury warned of the consequences of undermining the Islamic and Christian holy sites in the holy city, stating “this would be a flagrant violation of all international laws and humanitarian conventions.”

Al-Aqsa, he stressed: “It is an undisputed pure right for Muslims that is not subject to partition or division.”

He warned that settler incursions into the Muslim site, and the carrying out of Talmudic rituals on its grounds “could be an introduction for declaring sovereignty and gradual control over Al-Aqsa Mosque.”

Therefore, all churches and believers around the world must condemn the continuous Israeli aggression, he stressed, and pressure their governments to put an end to the Israeli “arrogance and plan to extend Jewish sovereignty over Al-Aqsa Mosque.”