PM accuses Islamic leader of ‘heating up’ Temple Mount
Raed Salah ‘should be in prison already,’ Netanyahu says, calling head of Islamic Movement Northern Branch ‘a one-man detonator’
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday accused an Arab Israeli Islamist leader of stirring up trouble on the Temple Mount ahead of this month’s Jewish holiday of Passover, saying Raed Salah should be in prison.
Salah, head of the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement, was sentenced last year to 11 months in prison for incitement to violence and racism over an inflammatory sermon he delivered in 2007 in Jerusalem. He has appealed the sentence. He has previously served terms for similar offenses.
“We recognize the attempts by Raed Salah to heat up the area of the Temple Mount ahead of the Passover holiday,” Netanyahu said at Sunday’s weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem. “This man is a one-man detonator.”
Netanyahu said at the same meeting that Israeli security forces have managed to reduce terror attacks by 26% in the past month. He called for Salah, however, to be kept from the flashpoint site, the epicenter of violence at the start of the latest round of violence around the Jewish holidays in October.
“I demand that security officials and Justice Minister [Ayelet Shaked] work to keep him away [from the Temple Mount],” the prime minister said.
“This man should be in prison already,” he added.
Israel captured the Mount, where two Jewish temples stood in antiquity, from Jordan in the 1967 Six Day War. It’s considered the holiest site to Jews and the third holiest in Islam and is today home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Jordanian religious authorities are in charge of the Muslim holy sites there, and while Israel controls access to the compound, Jews are barred from praying there.
Last year the government voted to outlaw the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement, accusing it of links to terrorist groups and incitement during the recent wave of violence.
“For years, the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement has led a mendacious campaign of incitement under the heading ‘Al-Aqsa is in danger,’ which falsely accuses Israel of intending to harm the Al-Aqsa Mosque and violate the status quo,” the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement in November.
The Northern Branch rejects the Oslo peace accords between Israel and the Palestinians, and boycotts Israel’s national elections on the grounds that they give legitimacy to the institutions of the Jewish state.
The Times of Israel Community.