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Holy Week resources and reflections

Muslim leader condemns Israeli closure of ‘papal’ press centre

JERUSALEM — (ENI) The grand mufti of Jerusalem has protested that the Israeli authorities prevented his meeting with journalists taking place at a hotel in East Jerusalem. The press conference was held in an open field.

Dressed in his ceremonial clothes, Grand Mufti Muhammad Ahmad Hussein, who was to meet Pope Benedict XVI on May 12, said that Israel had rejected the right of Palestinians to explain their situation to representatives of the international media.

The original media conference had been scheduled on May 11 at a hotel in East Jerusalem where a Palestinian press center was to have been open for the period of the papal visit.

The center was, however, closed by Israeli police the evening before the arrival of Pope Benedict XVI. Israel forbids official activity by the Palestinian Authority in East Jerusalem, a part of the city occupied by Israel after the 1967 Six Day War.

As a protest, the press conference was held in the open field in East Jerusalem. There the grand mufti told Ecumenical News International, “The pilgrimage of the Pope to Jerusalem is important. We are sure that he will call for peace with justice.”

Rafia Hussein, chief of staff of the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmud Abbas, said, “We want peace, but peace with justice, that means a

Palestinian State, alongside Israel, with East Jerusalem as its capital. The Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem is not recognized by the U.N.”

Peter Madros, a priest belonging to the Latin Patriarchate, as the Roman Catholic Church is known in the Holy Land, noted, “We are looking to the pontiff for words of wisdom and support as Christians, in the faith. We are sure that Pope Benedict will not ignore the pain of Palestinians, and our bitter situation.”

Micky Rosenfeld, the foreign press spokesperson of the Israeli police, told journalists that Israel has responsibility for the whole of Jerusalem, West and East, and that organizations linked to the Palestinian Authority had no right to hold such a press conference in the eastern part of the city.

The Israeli parliament, the Knesset, in 1980 proclaimed the whole of Jerusalem to be the “unified and eternal” capital of Israel, a decision not recognized by the United Nations.

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