Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune received yesterday, Monday, the preacher of Al-Aqsa Mosque, Sheikh Akram Sabri, who has been visiting Algeria for days. Sabri said after being received by the Algerian president, "Tebboune expressed his readiness to meet our demands concerning the city of Jerusalem and the blessed Al-Aqsa," without revealing the nature of these demands, adding that "this is the first meeting with President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, and it was a brotherly and sincere meeting, as sincere as Algeria is with Palestine."
Al-Aqsa preacher, Ikrima Sabri, recalled: “The extent of the two countries’ connection throughout history and Algeria’s position on the Palestinian cause, which has not changed.” He appreciated Algeria’s efforts, which, through its membership in the UN Security Council, worked to make Palestine’s voice heard to the world through this international platform. During the meeting, Sabri presented the Algerian president with a piece of stone from the Dome of the Rock, in honor of his honorable positions in defense of Palestinian rights, as he described it.
In the Algerian capital and Tlemcen, western Algeria, Sabry gave a number of lectures and seminars with a religious dimension, on the occasion of the Isra and Mi'raj anniversary, in which he spoke about the situation in Palestine and Jerusalem, the Israeli practices that oppress the residents of Jerusalem, and the efforts to Judaize the city and control the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Ibrahimi Mosque.
Last August, the occupation issued a decision to prevent Sheikh Ekrima Sabri (85 years old) from entering Al-Aqsa Mosque and its courtyards for a period of six months, while the sheikh said that this decision will not prevent him from performing his duty in defending Al-Aqsa. The Israeli occupation forces also arrested him during the same month, after he mourned during the Friday sermon in Al-Aqsa Mosque the head of the political bureau of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh.
Sheikh Sabri is subjected to a continuous and systematic campaign of incitement by circles on the Israeli right, especially extremist Jewish groups, which have filed dozens of complaints against him since the beginning of the Second Intifada. These complaints have led to lawsuits and accusations of incitement, after which he has been pursued by the occupation police with arrests, summonses, travel bans, and a number of decisions to prevent him from entering the West Bank, in addition to repeated raids on his home in the Al-Sawana neighborhood, and threats to demolish the building in which his apartment is located under the pretext that its 17 residents had not completed the licensing procedures, even though the building was built 25 years ago. At the time, this was considered a political measure taken under pressure from the extremist Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir.