OIC Secretary General Says Al-Aqsa Only Belongs to Muslims

Jerusalem, MINA – The Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), Hissein Brahim Taha, on Monday condemned Israeli violations at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem. He said the site belongs only to Muslims, Anadolu Agency reports.

The Al-Aqsa Mosque “is a pure place of worship for Muslims only,” Taha said during an extraordinary OIC meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to discuss Israeli violations at the Al-Aqsa compound.

The OIC chairman said Palestine, and in particular Jerusalem, had “witnessed an unprecedented increase in Israel’s illegal actions and daily attacks on Islamic and Christian holy sites, especially the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque.”

Stressing the need to preserve and respect the status quo at the holy sites in occupied Jerusalem, Taha condemned Israel’s temporal and spatial division of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

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“I spoke to several international dignitaries and informed them of the OIC’s rejection and condemnation of the Israeli occupation’s attempts to impose the temporal and spatial division of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque,” he added.

He also renewed his call for international actors “to assume their responsibilities and engage in sponsoring the political path leading to the end of the Israeli occupation and the establishment of an independent Palestinian State, with East Jerusalem as its capital.”

Tensions have been rising across the Palestinian territories since early April, amid Israel’s campaign of repeated arrests in the occupied West Bank and daily settler attacks on the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in East Jerusalem.

Al-Aqsa Mosque is the third holiest site in the world for Muslims. Jews call the area the Temple Mount, claiming it was the site of two Jewish temples in ancient times.

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Israel occupied East Jerusalem, where Al-Aqsa is located, during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. The regime had annexed the entire city in 1980, in a move never recognized by the international community. (T/RE1)

Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)

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