The Islamic Supreme Fatwa Council in Palestine today issued a fatwa (religious decree) prohibiting participation, both as candidates and voters, in the upcoming elections for the Israeli municipality in Jerusalem. It said participation in the elections is a clear and explicit violation of values and the national consensus rejecting this participation since the municipality is an arm of the Israeli occupation authorities involved in building settlements and the Judaization of the occupied holy city, as well as in making the living conditions of its Palestinian citizens very difficult. Most of Jerusalem’s 350,000 Palestinian citizens have refused the Israeli annexation of their city since its occupation in 1967 and have boycotted its municipal elections because they do not recognize its authority over or sovereignty in their occupied city. After Israel’s occupation of the eastern part of the city, it classified the Palestinians as residents and treated them as second or third-class residents, while turning most of East Jerusalem lands into settlements for Jews only causing as a result a major housing problem for the Palestinians. The Council, in its session headed by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and the Palestinian Territories, Chairman of the Supreme Fatwa Council, Sheikh Mohammad Hussein, also warned against Israeli plans to submit a draft bill for dividing Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam, between Muslims and Jews in which the al-Qibli Mosque area will be allocated to Muslims, and the area that starts from the courtyard of the Dome of the Rock to the northernmost of the Al-Aqsa courtyards for the Jews, which constitutes about 70% of the area of the walled Al-Aqsa Mosque compound. ‘Attempts by the occupation authorities to implement this step will cause a major wrath and will drag the entire region into a religious war with uncertain results,’ he said, calling on Muslims who can reach occupied Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque to be present there at all times in order to defend it against the plans of the Israeli occupation authorities. The Council added that these plans and daily storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque by fanatic Jews are nothing but a continuation of the Judaization efforts that target Jerusalem and its Mosque to create a new fact on the ground, stressing the rejection of these plans and violations by the occupation authorities and the police and that Al-Aqsa Mosque was, is and will remain an Islamic holy site.

Source: En – Palestine news & Information Agency – WAFA