Cairo - Egyptian Minister of Religious Endowments (Awqaf) Mohamed Mokhtar Gomaa rejected on Saturday Qatar's call to internationalize administration of Saudi Arabia's holy sites. Al-Azhar's senior scholars have also expressed their rejection to these calls. On Sunday, July 29, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir stressed in an interview with Al Arabiya and Al Hadath on the sidelines of the four-way meeting in Manama, that "Qatar's request to internationalize the holy sites in Saudi Arabia is aggressive and a declaration of war against the kingdom." "We reserve the right to respond to any party working in the field of internationalization of the holy sites," added al-Jubeir. During a joint press conference of the Saudi, Emirati, Bahraini and Egyptian foreign ministers after their meeting in Manama on Sunday, al-Jubeir highlighted that "the kingdom's history in facilitating the arrival of pilgrims is clear." Previously, Saudi Arabia's FM had rejected "Qatar's attempt to politicize the arrival of Qatari pilgrims" to the kingdom. In 2016, Saudi Arabia had seen a total of 1,862,909 pilgrims to perform the Hajj, with 1,325,372 of them coming from outside Saudi Arabia, while the total pilgrims from inside the kingdom reached 537,537 pilgrims, according to the General Authority for Statistics in Saudi Arabia.
