In an attempt to negate the Israel-UAE peace deal, the Grand Mufti of the Palestinian Authority has issued a fatwa against any Muslim using the deal in order to come to pray at the Al-Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount.

According to the agreement between Israel and the UAE, Muslims from outside of Israel and the PA are now able to visit the mosque to pray. The PA however, considers the entire deal a betrayal of their cause to isolate Israel, especially within the Muslim world. Thus, religious leaders from the PA have declared any Muslim who partakes of the agreement in order to visit the site a traitor.

The Palestinian Media Watch published a translation of an official PA TV appearance on Saturday by Supreme Sharia Judge Mahmoud al-Habbash it was written, “We absolutely won’t accept the [UAE’s] treason. One grain of sand from the soil of pure Palestine and from the soil of Al-Aqsa Mosque is more precious than our blood and our lives.”

He continued: “Whoever wants to come to visit the Al-Aqsa Mosque through the gate of Palestine you are welcome and we will rejoice over you. But whoever wants to come through the Israeli gate is unwanted, and he will find nothing but the shoes of the people of Jerusalem and the spit of the people of Jerusalem in his face.”

Sheikh Muhammad Hussein, the Grand Mufti of the PA went even further. Hussein appeared on Palestine This Morning and told viewers: “It is forbidden for a Muslim to arrive in a plane of the United Arab Emirates or another plane not of the United Arab Emirates to the Lod Airport [in Israel], which today they call Ben-Gurion Airport, in order to come and pray at Al-Aqsa Mosque. This is false marketing in terms of religious law: legally false, religiously offensive.”

Turkey’s Anadolu News Agency reported: “Sheikh Muhammad Hussein issued a fatwa (religious ruling) determining that praying at Al-Aqsa Mosque in the framework of the normalization agreement between Israel and the UAE is ‘forbidden.’ Hussein said that… ‘Praying at the Aqsa Mosque is open to all those who arrive through the legal Palestinian gate, and not to those who carry out normalization.’”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)