Egypt’s Awqaf Min. condemns Israeli flag raising at Aqsa Mosque

CAIRO - 4 May 2022: Egypt’s Minister of Awqaf (Religious Endowments) Mohamed Mokhtar Gomaa slammed Tuesday’s raising of the Israeli flag and the singing of the Israeli anthem at the holy Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Gomaa labeled such practices as a flagrant violation against the sanctity of the holy mosque and a dangerous provocation to the feelings of Muslim people around the world.

“What is happening serves the extremist groups and harms international peace and the dialogue of religions and cultures,” Gomaa wrote on Twitter.

Earlier, Palestinian Minister of Awqaf and Religious Affairs Hatem al-Bakri condemned the Israeli flag raising and the singing of the Israeli anthem at the mosque as a desecration of holy sites, Palestinian news agency (WAFA) reported.

He urged the international community and rights organizations concerned with heritage and cultural affairs to work to put an end to such unjustified violations, which he said are increasing in a systematic and planned manner.

He described such practices as a blatant defiance of feelings of Muslim people in Palestine as well as the Arab and Islamic world. Bakri also condemned the incident as a violation of the Aqsa mosque, which is the most sensitive Muslim-only holy site in the country.

What happened at Aqsa today can only reflect the Israeli occupation’s desire to ignite a religious war that they can start but won’t be able to stop, he said.

Bakri called on the Palestinian people and people of the Muslim and Arab countries to increase their presence in Aqsa Mosque in order to undermine the plans of the Israeli state to impose a temporal and spatial division of the mosque’s compound.

In mid-April, Egypt condemned the Israeli forces storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and the violent acts they committed against the Palestinians at its compound.

In a statement, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry called for self-restraint to fully protect the Muslim worshippers and allow them to perform their Islamic rituals in Al-Aqsa Mosque as a “a purely Islamic endowment for Muslims”.

The ministry also reiterated rejection of all forms of violence and incitement, including the calls for storming the mosque during the holy month of Ramadan.

Addressing the UN Security Council during the last week of April, Egypt's Permanent Representative to the United Nations (UN) Osama Abdel Khalek expressed Egypt’s warning against the Israeli continued attempts to Judaize East Jerusalem.

Abdel Khalek said Egypt considers the Israeli occupation’s attempts to impose control over the city and change the legal and historic status of the holy sites as a matter that represents a threat of escalation.