Israeli authorities on Friday briefly detained former Palestinian Authority mufti Ekrima Sabri after he mourned slain Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh during prayers at Yerushalayim’s Al-Aqsa Mosque on Friday.
In a sermon at the mosque, located on the Har Habayis, Sabri said that “the residents of Jerusalem are praying to God to have mercy on the martyr. We are asking for him to receive compassion and paradise.”
Sabri’s lawyer told AFP that the Palestinian cleric was “under investigation on suspicion of inciting terrorism because he mourned Ismail Haniyeh during the Friday sermon and described him as a martyr.”
The Israel Police, without naming the suspect, announced on Friday it was probing “remarks by a preacher during the afternoon prayer.”
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who oversees the Israel Police, confirmed that Sabri was arrested at his Yerushalayim home. “My policy towards inciters is clear—zero tolerance,” he tweeted.
Sabri was reportedly released later on Friday pending an indictment, and on the condition that he stay away from the Har Habayis for a week.
Haniyeh was killed by a blast at his Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps guesthouse in Tehran around 2 a.m. on July 31. Iran and Hamas have both accused the Jewish state of carrying out the attack.
Sabri, who heads the Yerushalayim Supreme Muslim Council and previously served as the P.A.-appointed mufti in Israel’s capital, has close ties with Turkey and regularly preaches on the Har Habayis.
In September 2023, an Israeli NGO petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court to order the immediate prosecution of Sabri for incitement to terrorism.
“It can’t be that an Israeli resident who blatantly encourages terrorism and murder is not immediately brought in for questioning,” said attorneys Eran Ben-Ari and Assaf Techelet of Ben-Ari, Marans, Techelet & Co, who represented the Lavi Organization, which filed the lawsuit.
In October 2022, while visiting the family of Palestinian terrorist Udai Tamimi, who was killed in a shootout with Israeli security guards that month, Sabri called on Palestinian youth to join the “family of martyrs,” which he described as “sublime and divine, and to be aspired to.”
Earlier that year, Religious Zionism Party head Betzalel Smotrich had urged authorities to launch a criminal investigation of Sabri over his participation in a virtual conference hosted by the Iranian regime.
The meeting was also attended by the leaders of various Iran-backed terrorist organizations, including Hamas’s Haniyeh, Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Ziyad al-Nakhala.
During the conference, the participating terror leaders emphasized their loyalty to the Iranian regime’s worldview and commitment to the “liberation of Jerusalem from the hands of the Zionists.” JNS