Netanyahu seeks to ban radical sheikh from Jerusalem

During the cabinet meeting, Netanyahu takes aim at the radical Islamist preacher Sheikh Raed Salah, saying Salah is has been seeking to “inflame” Jerusalem’s volatile Temple Mount compound ahead of Passover.

“I demand that security officials and the justice minister take steps to keep him away” from the Mount,” he says. “This man should have been in prison already.”

Sheikh Raed Salah, center, marches with supporters outside the Jerusalem District Court on October 27, 2015. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Salah leads the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement, which the Israeli cabinet banned in November as an organization with terrorist links. The group rejects the Oslo peace accords between Israel and the Palestinians and boycotts national elections on the grounds that they legitimize the Jewish state.

Salah was sentenced late last year to 11 months in prison for incitement to violence and racism over an inflammatory sermon he delivered in 2007 in Jerusalem. Salah has appealed the sentence. He has previously served terms for similar offenses.

— Times of Israel staff contributed