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Malegaon:
The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and Palestine Sheikh Mohammed Hussein
said that the Israeli restrictions prevented thousands of
Palestinian worshipers from attending the first Friday prayer of
Ramadan at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, Arab News
Correspondent Mohammed Mar'i reports from Ramallah.
"Only around 40,000 worshipers succeeded in entering Jerusalem for
the prayer. The Israeli police in Jerusalem confirmed the number",
the leading Saudi daily quoted Hussein as saying.
It added that thousands of police and
border patrol officers were stationed near Al-Aqsa Mosque, Old City
and East Jerusalem, in order to prevent disturbances.
Police said they allowed Palestinian married men aged 50 and over
and women aged 45 and over to enter Jerusalem.
Arabs inside Israel and those living in East Jerusalem do not face
restrictions in visiting the mosque compound, the place where the
Palestinian uprising began in 2000. But since then, Palestinians
from the West Bank have had an increasingly difficult time entering
Jerusalem. With occasional exceptions, Palestinians from the Gaza
Strip cannot get permission to visit the city.
In a separate development, Israeli forces on Friday demolished five
stores in the West Bank village of Izbet Al-Tabib, to the east of
Qalqilyah.
Bayan Al-Tabib, the head of the village's council, said that Israeli
bulldozers razed the stores under the pretext that the houses were
built without license from the Israeli Civil Administration, a
military department responsible for the coordination of civil
affairs in the West Bank.
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