Higher Arab Monitoring Committee chair Mohammad Barakeh said that the strike intends to send a message to the Israeli government to revoke the ban on the Islamic Movement’s northern branch.
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Tibi, a veteran parliamentarian belonging to the United Arab Party list, said the Islamic Movement expressed legitimate Muslim concerns over the holy site, and its positions did not seek to incite violence.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has shined new light on the breakdown of a probably history-altering spherical of 2008 peace talks, saying in that he rejected a suggestion from Israel’s Ehud Olmert – which included putting Jerusalem’s Old City under global control – ’cause he wasn’t allowed to study the map.
The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office issued a statement claiming the Northern Islamic Movement established a “salaried group of activists (called the Morabitat)” who mobilise “under the title ‘Al-Aqsa is in danger'”. “We should remember – we are not to blame for the terrorism directed against us, just as the French are not to blame for the terrorism directed against them”, he said.
Israeli security forces then carried out a series of overnight raids on the organization’s offices, seizing computers, documents and cash in regional branches across the country, the Israel Police and Shin Bet security agency said.
The new ban on the northern branch of the Islamic Movement means that those who remain active in the organization are subject to arrest, with all of the group’s property subject to seizure.
Cleric Raed Salah, the group’s leader, was defiant, saying his party would fight the measure and continue its mission. “A significant portion of recent terrorist attacks have been committed against the background of this incitement and propaganda”, said the statement, referring to violence that has killed 88 Palestinians and 13 Israelis since October. “I am proud to persist as head of the Islamic Movement and will be victorious in its name and victorious in its principles, Jerusalem and the blessed al-Aqsa mosque paramount among them”, Salah said in a statement. While much has been done to improve the lot of Israel’s Arab citizens, there is still far to go and if the government wishes to relegate the importance of the Islamic Movement it would perhaps do better by continuing and reinforcing that trend. The rest were killed in clashes with security forces. In 1996 the faction split in two-the Islamic Movement of Northern Israel and the Islamic Movement of Southern Israel. “May the streets of Jerusalem be purified with the blood of the innocent, who shed it in order to separate from their souls the soldiers of the Israel occupation, also in the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque”.
Arabs make up roughly 20 percent of Israel’s population, holding citizenship rights but frequently suffering discrimination in jobs, housing and public services.
The current round of violence erupted in mid-September over rumors that Israel was trying to expand the Jewish presence at the hilltop compound that houses the mosque.
According to biblical tradition, the first and second Jewish temples were located at the site of the Al-Aqsa compound and destroyed by the Babylonians and the Romans.
Salah has spent time in Israeli prisons on charges ranging from incitement, to spitting on a policeman, to funding Palestinian Islamist militant group Hamas.
Last Wednesday, the Israeli municipality in West Jerusalem approved the construction of 891 units in Gilo settlement, which was constructed on Bethlehem territory in the occupied West Bank.
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“The Islamic Movement, Hamas, the Islamic State and other similar organisations have a common ideology which incites attacks in the world and a wave of terrorism in Israel”.
