Arab MK says Joint List MKs will not ascend Temple Mount today so as not to take part in the ‘provocation’ arranged by Netanyahu, police.
By Hezki Baruch – Arutz Sheva
MK Ahmed Tibi (Arab Joint List) made it clear that the Arab MKs from his faction will not make it to the Temple Mount on Tuesday as part of the pilot program approved by police.
“The MKs from the Joint List will not come today to the Al-Aqsa Mosque as part of the provocation and conditions of Netanyahu and the Israel Police. The Arab MKs will enter whenever they wish, and not when Netanyahu wants them to, so it was in the past and so it will be in the future, “said Tibi.
He said that the Arab MKs “enter their house and their mosque, but the extremist MKs on the right burst into the mosque under the auspices of the Israeli government and police, and they are the ones demanding that the status quo be changed and that they be allowed to pray in the mosque square.”
“The whole world sees who is inciting, who is as wild as a thief at night, and who, on the other hand, behaves in a calculated and responsible manner, as a landlord to whom the mosque belongs,” added Tibi.
The Palestinian Arabs have begun calling the entire Temple Mount by the name Al Aqsa so as to deny any Jewish connection with the site, although the mosque is only a small part of the compound.
As part of a pilot approved by the Knesset and Jerusalem Police officers, MKs are allowed to enter the Temple Mount today, after two years in which MKs refrained from going up to Judaism’s holiest site.
So far, MKs Yehudah Glick (Likud) and Shuli Mualem (Jewish Home) have ascended. “I prayed for my wife, my family, Israeli society, Knesset members and ministers, and for the prime minister to continue to lead the people of Israel, and I prayed for world peace,” Glick said after leaving the mount.
“I believe after a conversation I had with the prime minister that there is a desire to continue today’s experiment,” said MK Glick, adding sarcastically: “I also have a strange feeling that those who bear responsibility for any attacks that occur are the terrorists themselves, not the people who ascend the Temple Mount [to pray].”