Al-Quds: The Plundered City

Al-Quds (Jerusalem), the city of “Al-Aqsa” Mosque, half of it is already occupied by the Zionists (backed by USA and European countries) since 1948, and the rest since 1967, which is considered by Al-Qur’an as a blessed environment... Today we could also call it The Plundered City.

In these last weeks, Jerusalem and its Arab population have been suffering a lot. The Israeli aggression is increasing daily. Al-Aqsa Mosque is often attacked by Jewish settlers, guarded by Israeli army or police. Sometimes the police close it and prohibits Muslims under 45 years old from entering the Mosque. More and more settlement homes are built and more are planned to be build. Many Jerusalemites are arrested every day and many Palestinian houses and olive trees belonging to the Palestinians are destroyed.

In this situation of calamity, we remember what happened to the natives of Jerusalem, at the time when it was under the occupation of the Romans, then Byzantine, more than 500 years ago no Jews were allowed to live in this city. So that when Umar ibn Alkhattab (the head of Islamic State in Medina) came to Jerusalem at the invitation of Sophronius, the Patriarch of Jerusalem who was also the representative of Byzantine, he could not avoid to mention in his famous “Umar Assurances Charter” that he would not allow Jews to live in the city. But later on, this restriction was no more valid, since in Islam there is no such dismissal.

Let us go through that charter, to compare it with the Israeli occupation laws and practices of today:

“In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. This is the assurance of safety, which the servant of God, Umar, the Commander of the Faithful, has given to the people of Aelia (Jerusalem). He has given them an assurance of safety for themselves: for their property, their churches, their crosses, the sick and healthy of the city and for all the rituals, which belong to their religion. Their churches will not be inhabited by Muslims and will not be destroyed. Neither they, nor the land, on which they stand, nor their cross, nor their property will be damaged. They will not be forcibly converted. No Jew will live with them in Jerusalem. …”.

In early 637, the Muslim army encircled Jerusalem. Patriarch Sophronius refused to surrender unless Umar, the Khalifah himself were to come to Jerusalem.

Umar then travelled alone with his servant and they had only one single donkey to share for their journey. When he arrived in Jerusalem, he was greeted by Sophronius, who was amazed to see Umar dressed in no more than a simple robe and as such was indistinguishable from his servant.

Umar was given a tour of the city, including the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. When the time for prayer came, Sophronius invited Umar to pray inside the Church, but Umar refused. He insisted that if he prayed there, later Muslims would use it as an excuse to convert it into a mosque – thereby depriving Christendom of one of its holiest sites. Instead Umar prayed outside the Church. (Summarized from: “Lost Islamic History” by Firas Alkhateeb).

Palestinian expulsion

Palestinians are people whose ancestors had lived there for millennia. This ended in 1948 with their forcible expulsion when over 700,000 indigenous people (about three quarter of the population) were expelled by the Haganah (= the armed Zionist militia that later became the Israeli Defense Forces) to make room for the influx of Jews from Europe and create a purely Jewish State. This event was called the Nakbah, or the catastrophe, when David Ben-Gurion, the head of the Jewish Agency, proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel. US President Harry S. Truman recognized it the same day.

In June 1967, Israel (with its armed forces supported by the US, France, Britain and Germany) managed to defeat combined forces of Egypt, Syria and Jordan and also overran large tracts of territory, including East Jerusalem where stands Al-Aqsa Mosque, the West Bank and Gaza. Later another exodus of Palestinians took place, with more than 250,000 people fleeing to the eastern bank of the Jordan River. However, roughly 600,000 Palestinians remained in the West Bank, and 300,000 in Gaza. Thus the 300,000 Israeli Jews came to rule some 1,200,000 Arabs in Palestine.

Today there are more than five million Palestinians living in exile from homes and land their families had inhabited for generations. Many still suffer the legacy of their dispossession: destitution, penury and insecurity. The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is going on until now. Those in the Gaza Strip (their number has already reached 2,820,000 in a space of 365 square kilometers only) are under nearly complete blockage.

This is a pity, because even though “Israel” was a seed that has clearly been planted by the “West” to continuously have control over all Arab countries through that “plant”, yet the Arab “nations” (with their so many advantages: territory, richness, population, common language, in majority a common religion, etc.) are not capable to defend Jerusalem and its Al-Aqsa Mosque. If they really intended to, they could have the support of many Muslim and non-Muslim nations.