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".