On the second day of his Holy Land Tour, Pope Benedict XVI called for Israelis and Palestinians to engage in “a sincere dialogue aimed at building a world of justice and peace.” The Pope made the comment as he was visiting the most contentious site in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Dome of the Rock, where Muslims believe the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven, and the adjacent Western Wall, the last remnant of the ancient Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. On Monday, a senior Palestinian Muslim cleric fiercely denounced Israeli policies in Jerusalem in the presence of Pope Benedict and appealed to the Pope to help end what he called the “crimes” of Israel. Sheikh Taysir al-Tamimi, the chief judge of the Muslim religious courts in the Palestinian territories, spoke at a meeting between the Pope and Christian, Muslim and Jewish clergy.

Sheikh Taysir al-Tamimi: “Your Holiness the Pope, I call on you, in the name of the one God, to condemn these crimes and exert pressure on the Israeli government so it can stop its aggression against the Palestinian people and release thousands of prisoners from the occupation cells and demolish the racist separation wall, remove the settlements and return the confiscated land to its owners and stop the demolition of houses in Jerusalem and the eviction of its people, to form a just peace which would return the rights to its people.”