PA Adviser To Abbas Claims Israel Is Plotting To Destroy Al-Aqsa Mosque

'Entire world will pay' if mosque on Temple Mount harmed

A prominent adviser to the Palestinian Authority’s Mahmoud Abbas claims Israel is plotting against the Al Aqsa Mosque in its capital, Jerusalem, and if Muslims don’t act decisively, “the entire world will pay.”

The Twitter comments by Mahmoud Al-Habbash, Abbas’ adviser on religious and Islamic affairs and a Shariah judge, were spotlighted by Palestinian Media Watch.

PMW described him as one of the more important religious figures in the PA.

He was “repeating the PA libel that Israel is planning to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque,” the group said.

Al-Habbash wrote in Twitter: “The “Israeli plot against the Al-Aqsa mosque is becoming more dangerous and expanding from day to day. If the Muslims don’t act now, something will occur whose end is bad and bitter, and then the entire world will pay dearly. The Al-Aqsa mosque is religion and faith, and nothing is too valuable for it. ‘So take warning, O people of vision’ [Quran, Sura 59:2, Sahih International translation].”

PMW noted the last warning was a quote from the Quran calling for punishment of the Jews.

Quran, Sura 59:2, in the Sahih International translation, reads: “It is he who expelled the ones who disbelieved among the People of the Scripture [Jews] from their homes at the first gathering. You did not think they would leave, and they thought that their fortresses would protect them from Allah; but [the decree of] Allah came upon them from where they had not expected, and he cast terror into their hearts [so] they destroyed their houses by their [own] hands and the hands of the believers. So take warning, O people of vision.”

He wrote in April for the official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida: “The battle over Jerusalem that is raging today is not just a battle with a foreign occupation that has occupied [Jerusalem’s] land, but a battle between facts and myth, between truth and falsehood, between justice and injustice, between integrity and distortion, between tolerance and fanaticism, and between good and evil. … And perhaps those who read history well and understand the irrevocable facts of the religion will be calm regarding the final result of this battle, which will not complete its path except in the harbors of the promise for the end of days.”