A Saudi Arabian cleric announced on television on Sunday he will make an unprecedented visit to Jerusalem next week as part of an intensive Arab world effort to claim Muslim ties to the city, which Arabs envision as the capital of an independent Palestinian Authority country. The Israeli Foreign Ministry said no applications have been made for a visa for the cleric, Sheikh Mohammed al-Areefi, and that they know nothing about his announcement. Al-Areefi told his viewers that he would broadcast his next show from Jerusalem to discuss Muslim claims to the city. Saudi Arabia bans travel to Israel and is one of the most fundamentalist Muslim countries. The Arab world has been conducting a campaign for several years that aims to deny Jewish connection to the Temple Mount, claiming that the Holy Temples never existed. To this end, valuable archaeological material from the Temple periods has been wilfully destroyed by excavations and construction undertaken illegally by the Arab Wakf on the Temple Mount. The Palestinian Authority plans to stage a children’s march on the city this week. Two years ago, Israeli police broke up a similar attempt to mark the Arab League's designation of Jerusalem as the capital of Arab culture for 2009.
