CAIRO: The Arab League has warned that Israeli attempts to control highly sensitive religious sites in Jerusalem by force risk igniting a “religious war.”
Israel’s actions are “playing with fire, and will only ignite a religious war and shift the core of the conflict from politics to religion,” said Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Abul Gheit.
He was speaking at an urgent meeting of Arab foreign ministers in Cairo on the latest violence in Jerusalem.
“I invite the occupying state (Israel) to carefully learn the lessons from this crisis and the message it holds,” Abul Gheit said in a televised speech.
“Handling holy sites lightly and with this level of arrogance seriously threatens to ignite a religious war, since not one single Muslim in the world would accept the desecration of Al-Aqsa Mosque,” he said.
Protests and deadly unrest have erupted in the days since Israel installed new metal detectors on July 16 outside the entrance to the Haram Al-Sharif compound.
Palestinians view the move as an attempt by Israel to assert further control over the site, which houses Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock.
“Challenges and dangers facing Jerusalem especially, and Palestine generally, are bigger than ever because of the increasing, illegal occupation measures implemented by the occupying force,” said Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Al-Malki.
After intensive international diplomacy, Israel removed the metal detectors on Tuesday.
Newly installed railings and scaffolding where cameras were previously mounted were also removed early on Thursday.
Police said on Thursday morning that all new security measures had been taken away.
The removal was seen as a defeat for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had ordered the new security measures and was forced to backtrack after warnings the unrest could spiral out of control.
It represented a rare victory for Palestinians, who remained united in their boycott.
In the pre-dawn hours of Thursday, crowds of Palestinians gathered at the entrance of the site to celebrate, with whistling and constant horns from cars.
Young men set off firecrackers as Israeli forces watched closely.
Arab League chief says Israel risks igniting ‘religious war’
Arab League chief says Israel risks igniting ‘religious war’
Algeria parliament approves amended law criminalizing French rule
- “Algeria, which sacrificed millions of martyrs for its freedom, independence and sovereignty, will never bargain away its memory or its sovereignty for any material advantage,” he told the lower house
ALGIERS: Algeria’s parliament on Monday approved an amended law criminalizing French colonial rule, removing earlier provisions that called for official apologies and broad reparations from France after Senate demanded the changes.
The law, approved by the lower house in December, had declared France’s colonization of Algeria from 1830 to 1962 a crime and demanded an apology and reparations, with Paris calling it “hostile.”
But in January the Senate said some articles of the text did not fully reflect the official approach set out by President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, who had said Algeria did not need financial reparations from France.
A clause seeking compensation for victims of French nuclear tests in Algeria remains unchanged.
Fawzi Bendjaballah, rapporteur of the joint committee tasked with revising the bill, said the changes reflected the “principled and unwavering position of the Algerian state.”
“Algeria, which sacrificed millions of martyrs for its freedom, independence and sovereignty, will never bargain away its memory or its sovereignty for any material advantage,” he told the lower house.
France called the bill “clearly hostile,” coming at a time of diplomatic friction between the two countries.
Relations soured in late 2024 when France officially backed Moroccan sovereignty over the disputed Western Sahara, where Algeria backs the pro-independence Polisario Front.
Algeria says the war with colonial France killed 1.5 million people. French historians put the death toll lower at 500,000, 400,000 of them Algerian.
The bill states that France holds “legal responsibility for its colonial past in Algeria and the tragedies it caused.”
It lists the “crimes of French colonization,” including nuclear tests, extrajudicial killings, “physical and psychological torture,” and the “systematic plundering of resources.”
However, Tebboune had said in a speech in December 2024 that Algiers was “not tempted by money, neither euros nor dollars.”
“We demand recognition of the crimes committed in the country” by France, he said. “I am not asking for financial compensation.”
Before taking office, French President Emmanuel Macron had acknowledged that his country’s colonization of Algeria was a “crime against humanity,” but Paris has yet to offer Algiers a formal apology.
