RAMALLAH (Dispatches) -- Hamas has warned of “repercussions” over plans by the occupying regime of Israel’s president to visit Al-Khalil’s Ibrahimi Mosque in the occupied West Bank during the Jewish festival of Hanukkah.
On Friday, Zionist president Isaac Herzog’s office said he would take part in a candle-lighting the ceremony on Sunday at the mosque.
The sensitive site is holy to Muslims. After Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967 it divided Al-Khalil into separate Muslim and Jewish cities.
Al-Khalil which the Zionist regime calls Hebron, is the biggest city in the West Bank, home to more than 200,000 Palestinians. About 1,000 Zionist settlers, who engage in frequent attacks on Palestinians, also live there under heavy military protection.
“The Israeli occupation must bear full responsibility to the repercussions of this assault,” Ismail Radwan, a senior Hamas official, said in a statement on Friday.
The candle-lighting “is a provocation of the Palestinians’ feelings and a blatant desecration of the sanctity of the mosque,” he said, calling on Palestinians “to ward off this provocative move”.
Al-Khali has seen regular unrest, and the shrine believed to be the burial site of prophets including Abraham, is frequently the focal point of tensions.
In 1994, Zionist settler Baruch Goldstein martyred 29 Palestinian Muslim worshippers inside the shrine with an assault rifle before being beaten to death by survivors.
The announcement by Herzog’s office also drew the ire of the occupying regime of Israel’s leftist anti-settlement Meretz party.
On Friday, Britain officially designated all of Hamas a terrorist organization.
The Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the group that rules the Gaza Strip, has been banned in Britain since 2001 but the ban has now been extended to its political entities.
On Saturday, a media advisor to Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh called on the world countries, especially the Arabs, to mobilize against attempts to liquidate the Palestinian cause against the Israeli occupation.
Taher al-Nunu said the UK terror designation was an attempt to blackmail Hamas, adding the measure had been taken under pressure from the Israeli lobby.
“Hamas will not change its positions and will ignore the British decision,” he said.

“The Palestinian resistance, led by Hamas, has made progress in gaining international support. However, the Zionist regime has lagged behind in this regard. Israel cannot get legitimacy with its recent actions because they are contrary to international law and human rights,” he added.
British Home Secretary Priti Patel announced the decision to designate Hamas in its entirety as a “terrorist organization” during a speech for the right-wing Heritage Foundation think tank in Washington DC last week.
Hamas said in a statement after the announced that instead of apologizing to the Palestinian people for the Balfour Declaration or British imperialism, London “aligns itself with the Israeli occupation”.
“Resisting occupation by any means is the right of any people under occupation,” the statement read. “Israel is the one acting like a terror state, hurting and attacking Palestinians. The international community, especially Britain and the UN, must stop sending mixed messages and speak out against Israel’s blatant violation of international law.”