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Ramadan asserts muslim attachment to jerusalem

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From Khalid Amayreh in Jerusalem

As the month of Ramadan draws to a close, many Palestinians are devoting the last ten days of the holy month to gaining more  spiritual enrichment through I’tikaf or uninterrupted spiritual engagement.

Many people are going for I’tikaf this year, motivated by a desire to gain Allah’s blessing and also encouraged by a relative relaxation of the normally harsh Israeli restrictions on the entry of Palestinians to al-Quds.

The Israeli occupation authorities this year allowed men over 50 and women over 45 to enter Jerusalem on Fridays. However, worshipers are still subjected to meticulous and often humiliating searches.

 worshippers
Palestinian worshippers on their way to Jerusalem at a checkpoint near Bethlehem

This, however, seems to have little bearing on the number of Muslims wanting to access the Haram al Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary, of Jerusalem.

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The most invisible silent embassy

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By Stuart Littlewood – London

(source: Palestine Chronicle)

As if they didn’t have enough problems, tormented Palestinians suffer the added misfortune of being represented here in London – the media capital of the western world – by the most invisible and silent embassy it is possible to imagine.

A year ago, campaigners urged the ambassador to get his act together or go home. He angrily retorted that he had "a plan of how to influence British Media to give us the Palestinians more exposure".
 
Whatever the plan was, it hasn’t worked. Press releases and briefings are non-existent. It is many months since I last heard the ambassador on radio or TV, while his Israeli opposite number pops up on the national airwaves with nauseating regularity. And the Palestinians’ precious shop window – their embassy website – never functioned properly and has now been taken down. What a way, as the Americans say, to run a f***ing railroad. So what’s going on?

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