Press Release
Following the Footsteps of Occupation... the Security Services of the Palestinian Authority Prevents Pilgrims from Travelling to the Sacred House of Allah Because of their Political Opinion
(Translated)

In a brazen and dangerous step against the people of Palestine and in their steadfastness and upholding their land, and their political anti-occupation opinion, the security services of the Palestinian Authority (PA) advanced this morning at the Bridge crossing to stop Al-Haj Muhannad As-Sabateen from travelling and confiscated his passport, and asked him to check with the Preventive Security Service in Bethlehem, which refused in an oppressive and illegal way to give him the passport to travel.

The insistence of the security services to prevent Al-Haj from travelling, despite the fact that Muhannad provided them with official papers from the public prosecutor in Bethlehem, proving that he is not wanted in connection with any case and is allowed to travel for Hajj pilgrimage, is a reprehensible and shameless behaviour and contrary to the laws of the PA that they espouse, and an act that is carried out only by the occupation and its security apparatus. The PA pressed on the return of pilgrims and others from the crossings in order to subjugate them and exploit them to force treacherous political attitudes out of them.

The PA and its security services which failed, and remains so, to provide the protection and defence of the people of Palestine and to protect their sanctities, their farms, their property before the attacks of the occupation and the settlers; boisterous and intimidating the people of Palestine and increasing their suffering just as the occupation's orders in order to displace them and subject them to the dictates of the criminal occupation.

The people of Palestine and from them the members of Hizb ut Tahrir were not intimidated nor were subjugated by the war machine of the Jewish occupation and its repressive policies, they will also not be intimidated by the contentious PA security services, and as Muhannad said to the Preventive Security Service in Bethlehem, "My reward is with Allah and the sin is on your necks".

We will not stop at this press release, but will follow it with other work so that the PA and its security agencies realise that their obstruction from the House of Allah will not pass unnoticed.

And we say to the PA that the burden and sin of Palestine and its people, and their suffering from the occupation and you is on your necks, and that the Khilafah "Caliphate" will be established soon, God willing, and then you will suffer the punishment in this world yet the torment of the Hereafter is most severe if you have understanding.

[وَمَا لَهُمْ أَلَّا يُعَذِّبَهُمُ اللَّهُ وَهُمْ يَصُدُّونَ عَنِ الْمَسْجِدِ الْحَرَامِ وَمَا كَانُوا أَوْلِيَاءَهُ إِنْ أَوْلِيَاؤُهُ إِلَّا الْمُتَّقُونَ]

"But why should Allah not punish them while they obstruct [people] from al-Masjid al- Haram and they were not [fit to be] its guardians? Its [true] guardians are not but the righteous, but most of them do not know" [Al-Anfal: 34]

The Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir
Palestine - The Blessed Land