“Opening the doors of Al-Aqsa mosque to Jews is immoral, and clearly demonstrates the Israeli government’ s racial practices,” said Hanna

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, May 16 (IslamOnline.net & Al-Quds Press) – The Orthodox Church condemned on Friday, May 16, the Israeli government’s intention to soon allow Jews to pray inside al-Aqsa mosque compound, one of Islam’s holiest sites.

“The step is nothing but a provocation of the feelings of both Muslims and Christians,” stressed the Church spokesman Archimandrite Attallah Hanna.

“Opening the doors of al-Aqsa mosque to Jews is immoral, and clearly demonstrates the Israeli government’ s racial practices and its attempt to Judaise the holy city,” Hanna told Quds Press news agency.

“Today it is Al-Aqsa mosque, tomorrow it will be the Church of  holy Sepulcher,” he warned.

Stressing that the city’s Muslims and Christians are united in one trench, the leading clergyman threatened that any attempt to break into al-Aqsa mosque “will be confronted.”

Hanna’s statements came a few days after Israel's Internal Security Minister Tzachi Hanegbi had promised that Jews will soon be allowed to pray inside Al-Aqsa compound, even without an accord with its Muslim guardians.

The Palestinians issued a strongly-worded warning that such a decision would only set the region further ablaze.

Archimandrite Hanna said Israel wants to obliterate all Arab Palestinian traces in al-Quds and holy lands, and wipe out “its spiritual heritage and imprint of civilization.”

A group of ultra-nationalist extremist Jews known as the Temple Mount Faithful had inflamed tensions in the occupied city in July, 2001, by laying a symbolic cornerstone for a Jewish temple on Al-Haram Al-Sharif (where al-Aqsa mosque is located), which some Jews claim is the site for the so-called Temple Mount.

Archimandrite Hanna said the Orthodox Church in Al-Quds would begin a series of contacts with a number of international institutions concerned “in an effort to condemn policies of the Israeli occupation forces against the city and its sacred places.”

He insisted on the Palestinians' right to return to their former homes in present-day Israel as a basic right.

"Nobody can make us give this up for the American empire. Whoever is going to give up the right of return is not a Palestinian, even if he is elected," he said in a recent rally.

The right of return is one of the most sacred tenets for millions of Palestinian refugees expelled out of their homes by Israel.

"This right is no less important than the right to have Al-Quds as our capital ... Although we have two religions, we are one people," said Hanna.