CAIRO: The Arab League and Egypt on Thursday condemned the storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque by a group of settlers led by two ministers in the Israeli government, and warned of its dangerous consequences.
The ministers — Itamar Ben-Gvir and Yitzhak Wasserlauf — visited the flashpoint site on Thursday under heavy security from the Israeli occupation police.
The occupation authorities also confiscated the keys to the Dome of the Rock.
The visit occurred amid heightened tension in Israeli-Palestinian relations.
A statement from the General Secretariat of the Arab League warned that the repeated storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque by Israeli government officials and settlers represented a provocation to Muslims around the world and a violation of all international charters and laws.
This “comes within the framework of the occupation government’s systematic policy to try to change the historical and legal status quo in Al-Aqsa Mosque and impose a policy of temporal and spatial division,” the statement added.
The league held the Israeli occupation authorities fully responsible for the repercussions of the actions and their effect on peace and stability in the region.
It called on the international community, its states and institutions, to intervene immediately to stop the aggression, provide protection for the Palestinian people, and hold Israel and its officials accountable for the crimes.
It urged the international community not to treat Israel as a state above the law, which encouraged it to commit more crimes.
The Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs called on Israel to immediately stop its provocative and escalatory actions, which it said would only lead to inflaming feelings and increasing the existing state of tension in the Occupied Territories.
Egypt condemned Israeli authorities’ prevention of Muslim worshippers from exercising their inherent right to access and worship at the holy site.
Egypt stressed that the successive storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque and attempts to divide it temporally and spatially would not affect its existing legal and historic status, which recognizes that the site is an exclusive Islamic endowment and a place of worship for Muslims, according to the statement from the ministry.
Cairo also warned of the dangerous consequences of such irresponsible practices for the future of security and stability in the region.
The Palestinian Authority’s Jerusalem Affairs Ministry warned that the Israeli government and extremists like Ben-Gvir would “push things toward religious war” by provoking Muslims worldwide.
The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it considered Ben-Gvir’s visit an attempt to impose Israeli sovereignty over the site.
Spokesperson for the secretary-general of the Arab League Jamal Rushdi said that the organization’s General Secretariat had delivered a copy of its appeal for help to the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
Rushdi said that the appeal included evidence of what the Palestinian people are subjected to in terms of continuous Israeli occupation and colonial settlement, adding that the struggle in the field of international law was of great importance in consolidating Palestinian rights.
