Fury against Israel mounted in Arab and other Moslem countries over the week-end as a result of Thursday’s fire in the El Aksa Mosque in Old Jerusalem. Government and religious leaders were unanimous in blaming Israel and called Friday’s arrest of a 27-year-old Australian sheep herder on suspicion of setting the fire an attempt by Israeli authorities to shift the blame from themselves.
In Cairo, the representatives of 24 Moslem nations appealed to United Nations Secretary-General U Thant for an impartial UN investigation of the fire. The Arab League called for an emergency session of the UN Security Council to discuss what it called “Israel’s contempt for religious sacraments.”
The Jordanian Government announced in Amman that it would ask for an urgent meeting of the United Nations Security Council to consider the question of Jerusalem and Israel’s alleged failure to comply with Security Council resolutions calling on Israel not to proceed with measures to incorporate East Jerusalem into Israeli territory. Amman said that Ambassador Muhammad el-Farra. head of the Jordanian mission to the United Nations would also call for sanctions against Israel.
(At the United Nations, the Pakistani mission issued a statement “on behalf of the missions of Islamic countries from Africa and Asia” announcing that they had unanimously agreed at an urgent meeting Friday “that responsibility for this outrage lay squarely on the shoulders of Israeli occupation authorities.”
(Secretary-General U Thant said that he was “greatly shocked and saddened by the fire” and hoped that “the full and verified facts of this most distressing occurrence will be promptly ascertained.”)
ARAB RIVALS ISSUE CALLS FOR ‘HOLY WAR’ TO FREE JERUSALEM
A day of mourning was observed in Moslem countries Saturday though calls for a general protest strike were largely unheeded. Shops remained open in the Arab capitals. But Amman, Jordan, was the scene of a major demonstration yesterday when an estimated 50,000 Arabs marched on the United States Embassy shouting for action to “free the sacred places desecrated by Israel.”
Calls for a holy war against Israel were issued by President Gamal Abdel Nasser, of Egypt, and King Faisal, of Saudi Arabia, two heads of state who have been at odds over the struggle against Israel. President Nasser pledged that Egypt would “fight to free Jerusalem.” In a message to his Defense Minister, Mohamed Fawzi and the armed forces, he said, “The enemy of God and our enemy has closed the doors to peace. There is no use resorting to any quarter in the quest of justice.” King Faisal said the UN had proved incapable of forcing Israel to abide by its resolution so it depended on the Islamic world “to liberate the holy places in Jerusalem.”
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