Arab League chief warns, Israel 'playing with fire' by crossing Jerusalem 'red line'

JERUSALEM - The Arab League has warned Israel about crossing “a red line” in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict over the sacred city of Jerusalem. Meanwhile, an Israeli minister said the metal detectors that triggered the violence will remain.

“The Israeli government is playing with fire and risking a major crisis with the Arab and Islamic world,” Secretary General of the Arab League Ahmed Aboul Gheit said in a statement cited by the international media.

“Jerusalem is a red line that Muslims and Arabs cannot allow to be crossed… and what is happening today is an attempt to impose a new reality on the Holy city,” he also said.

He also called on Israel not to deepen the conflict and urged the international community to “oblige the Israeli government to maintain the status quo” as its current policies “hurt the feelings” of all the Muslim world, not only the Palestinians.

The United Nations Security Council will meet on Monday to discuss the possible ways out of the violent Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the Arab League is to hold emergency talks in Cairo on the matter on Wednesday.

Tensions, triggered by a shooting attack at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem on July 14 , began to escalate as Israel imposed additional security measures, including metal detectors and additional CCTV cameras, outside the al-Aqsa Mosque. Palestinian worshippers have been protesting the move outside the compound.

Meanwhile, the Israeli authorities are not going to remove the controversial metal detectors, citing security reasons.