RAMALLAH: Israeli MK Moshe Feiglin was denied entry to Al-Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem, reports Israeli daily Jerusalem Post. Following his attempt to enter the mosque, Israeli police had to remove him from the site and it was closed off to visitors. Feiglin is a member of the rightwing Likud-Beitenu party. In the past, he has supported a call for the expulsion of the Palestinian citizens of Israel who do not sufficiently prove their loyalty to Israel. In November 2012, he authored a political platform that called for Israel to “restore...complete sovereignty over Jerusalem and the Temple Mount," where the Al-Aqsa Mosque is located. In the same platform, Feiglin called for an end to the Oslo Accords in order to fully annex the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. He wrote that Palestinians in the occupied territories, following an annexation, will not have the right to vote because they “may do so in any one of the 22 amazing democracies the Arab Nation has established since World War 1." Feiglin is also an admitted supporter of Meir Kahane, the founder of the terrorist organization Jewish Defense League and the ideologue behind a radical Kach party that calls for a greater Israel, the expulsion of all Palestinians, and replacing Israel's present political system with a state founded strictly on Jewish law. Feiglin's attempt to visit the mosque follows a week of mass demonstrations in the occupied West Bank following the death of Arafat Jaradat, a Palestinian prisoner who is believed to have been tortured to death by Israeli intelligence after being arrested for throwing a rock. Many speculate that former Israeli PM Ariel Sharon's 2000 visit to Al-Aqsa sparked the Second Palestinian Intifada, though many other factors contributed to the outbreak of the uprising, including Israel's murder of 12 unarmed Palestinian citizens of Israel during protests in October 2000. BN
