Early this month a serious road accident took place in the Jordan Rift Valley in which six Arab residents of Jerusalem were killed. One of the deceased was however refused burial by Muslim religious authorities in Jerusalem.
“Ala’a Qarash was one of six people killed in a collision between a truck and a minibus on Highway 90 two weeks ago.
The Palestinians accused Qarash of being a “traitor” for allegedly selling property in Jerusalem to Jews, and Jerusalem’s [former] mufti, Ekrima Sa’id Sabri, determined Qarash did not deserve a proper burial at a Muslim site. […]
Sabri noted in his ruling that “anyone who sells (property) to Jews in Jerusalem’s Old City is no longer part of the Islamic faith, we will not accept his repentance, and he will not be buried in a Muslim cemetery.”
After the accident, the bodies of the Arab casualties were brought to the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount for a special prayer, but the Waqf refused to allow Qarash’s body into the mosque. For the same reason, many other mosques in east Jerusalem refused to hold Qarash’s funeral service.”
The Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi of Jerusalem later stepped in, approving Mr Qarash’s burial in a Jewish cemetery in the city.
Another story relating to property sales was reported by the Times of Israel last week.
“A Palestinian Authority court in Qalqilya on Wednesday sentenced two Palestinians convicted of selling land to Israeli Jews to 15 years of hard labor.
“The court sentenced F.A.E. and A. Kh. M. from Kafr Thulth in the Qalqilya Governorate for the crime of leaking land to the enemy,” a memo on the PA High Judicial Council’s website said, referring to the two convicts by their initials and using the Arabic term to allude to selling land to Israeli Jews. “The court…sentenced the convicts to 15 years of hard labor.” […]
Palestinian law considers attempting to sell or selling land to Israeli Jews a punishable offense.
According to the law, possible punishments for trying to sell or selling land to Israeli Jews include different degrees of hard labor and execution.
However, the law requires that PA President Mahmoud Abbas approve any death sentence, and he has not signed off on any executions since 2006.”
Similar sentences have also been handed down in the past.
With such stories falling outside the BBC’s tightly framed narrative on ‘settlements’ it is unsurprising to see that neither has received any BBC coverage.
