Israel bans Mahathir from Jerusalem
Israel bans Mahathir from Jerusalem
Nasser Abu Bakr, Agence France-Presse/Ramallah, West Bank
Israel on Monday banned former Malaysian premier Mahathir Mohamad, whose comments have in the past infuriated Jews, from entering Jerusalem while visiting the West Bank.
Mahathir was delayed for an hour at the Allenby crossing from Jordan into the West Bank where Israeli officials banned him from going to Jerusalem or the city of Jenin in the West Bank, Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qurie said.
"I want to say to the entire world that this is the political mind of the occupation," Qurie told a joint news conference with Mahathir in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
"This is an important man, an international man and the Israelis prevent him from going to Jerusalem, they prevent him from going to Jenin," he added, expressing his apologies.
The Israeli authorities, which continue to control the entrance into towns throughout most of the West Bank as well as controlling the border into Jordan, said they had received no advance warning of Mahathir's arrival.
"We received no request to facilitate the visit. We weren't aware he was coming, so we didn't deal with it," said a foreign ministry spokesman, pointing out that Israel has no diplomatic relations with Malaysia.
The former prime minister had caused uproar in Israel just before his retirement in 2003 by saying that Jews rule the world by proxy, getting others to fight and die for them.
Mahathir, who championed the Palestinian cause during his 22 years in power before retiring in October last year, said he was visiting the West Bank as a show of solidarity with the Palestinians.
"It was not easy to come here and I was delayed a lot. I can't go to Jerusalem. I tried to go to Jenin, but I can't," he said.
"I hope that my next visit will be to Jerusalem, the capital of the Palestinian state," he added.
Sources in Qurie's office said the former Malaysian leader would instead go to Abu Dis in an effort to catch a glimpse of the golden dome of Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque compound, the third holiest site in world Islam.
Jenin city council said Mahathir had been invited to the northern West Bank city to tour the destruction caused during the last five years of the Palestinian uprising.
It said it had asked Mahathir to head an international campaign to rebuild the impoverished, volatile city.
In 2003, Mahatir told the Organization of the Islamic Conference: "The Europeans killed six million Jews out of 12 million. But today the Jews rule this world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them. 1.3 billion Muslims cannot be defeated by a few million Jews.
"Of late because of their power and their apparent success they have become arrogant," he said at the time. "And arrogant people like angry people will make mistakes, will forget to think".