http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=596597
Abbas urges Muslims, Christians to visit Palestine
CAIRO (Ma'an) -- President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday urged Muslim and
Christian Arabs to visit Palestine to show support for the Palestinian
people.
"We welcome any Arab Muslim and Christian visiting
Jerusalem and Bethlehem," Abbas said in a meeting with Egyptian
journalists and intellectuals at the end of his 3-day visit to Cairo.
"Coming
to this country does not mean normalization between the visitors'
countries and Israel, but rather a visit to imprisoned people not to
those who imprison them."
Abbas criticized the Islamic world's
indifference to the Al-Aqsa Mosque and blamed some Islamic intellectuals
for "issuing Fatwa suggesting that visiting al-Aqsa Mosque and offering
support is prohibited according to the Islamic regulations.
"Prophet Muhammad, though, mentioned al-Aqsa Mosque as one of the few mosques Muslims should set out to," the president said.
Influential
Muslim cleric Yousef al-Qaradawi recently said that visiting the mosque
while it remains under Israeli occupation would be a breach of
religious regulations.
Al-Qaradawi visited the Hamas-run Gaza
Strip earlier in May, a step that was strongly denounced by Palestinian
Authority officials who said such visits had political implications and
maintained disunity between the Palestinians.
Abbas said that
Arab and Islamic countries and organizations had pledged hundreds of
millions of dollars to support Jerusalem during conferences and summits,
but that only a small portion of the pledged money was sent.
During
the Arab League summit in Libya the conveners agreed to allocate $500
million to Jerusalem, but in reality only $37 million was delivered,
Abbas said.
At another Arab League summit in Doha, Arab
countries agreed to allocate $1 billion to Jerusalem, but that was "just
a number," the president said.
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