A former convicted terrorist who now is a leading Israeli Muslim cleric and peace advocate has called on rabbis to lead a joint Muslim-Jewish “peace march.”

“We will proclaim to every religious leader that they preach peace between two religions and two peoples,” Sheikh Abdullah Nimar Darwish told Israel Radio in an interview.

“We want to call on politicians to speed up the peace process. Let’s come and make peace together and stage a march in Tel Aviv or Kfar Kassem that will send a message there is enough spilling of blood and enough destruction, enough killing and enough hate.”

Israel radio, which has a long tradition of being an advocate for the center-left, immediately turned to Chief Rabbi of Israel, Rabbi David Lau, for comment.

Israel Radio reported on its website,” Rabbi Lau answered that he supports a meeting of this kind” and he added, “There is no permission in the name of God, and no justification to attack people and not attack the lives of people. I would be happy to have another meeting with the leaders of other religions and deliver the message that this is not the way of God.”

I am not going to second-guess Rabbi Lau but certainly can second guess Israeli Radio, euphemistically known as the “Voice of Israel.”

If Rabbi Lau had declined to respond, the radio station would have reported, “The Chief Rabbi of Israel, whose father is former Chief Rabbi Israel Meir Lau and perhaps the most popular and respected Jewish leader in the country, refused to comment if he favors a peace march with Muslim leaders.”

So Israel Radio got away with another attempt for a campaign to jeopardize Israel as a Jewish state.

Why am I so doubtful of Sheikh Darwish?

Just because he was a terrorist does not mean he has not reformed, but peaceful means do not always have peaceful objectives.

Darwish is a native of Kfar Kassem and studied Islam in Shechem, a hotbed of Palestinian Authority terrorism in central Samaria.

He founded the Islamic Movement in Israel in 1971 and a few years later started a jihadist organization promoting “an Arab Islamic state in Palestine.”

He was arrested for terrorist activities, and he was convicted and jailed until Israel freed him as part of the infamous Jibril Agreement in 1985, when the Peres administration freed 1,150 terrorists and security prisoners in exchange for three Israeli prisoners captured during the First Lebanon War.

Darwish’s reform has included his public opposition to violence, but only in pre-1967 Israel.

However, he remains the spiritual leader of the southern branch of the Islamic Movement, whose northern branch leader is Raad Salah, the radical Islamic preacher who has been in and out of jail several times for violence and incitement, including calls for violence on the Temple Mount.

Salah has disassociated himself from Darwish because the radical leader opposes Darwish’s pragmatic approach to achieve “one-state” solution to the “problem” of Israel’s being a Jewish state.

“Whoever establishes a movement that is based on violation of the law, does not represent us,” Darwish has said. “However, in the West Bank and Gaza there is no rule of law; there is an occupation which must be eliminated, and not a state which must be respected.

“Therefore, I understand the Palestinians or the Lebanese, which are rising up in any way they can… If I were being occupied, I too would rise up, but the moment I decided that I am a part of the state as long as I am within the borders of the Green Line, I obey the law, together with my representatives in the Knesset, and this is proof that I do recognize the State of Israel.”

Darwish “understands” the need for violence in Judea, Gaza and Samaria while calling for peace, justifying violence because of the “occupation” and publicly opposing violence in Israel, despite his organization’s incitement. The southern branch of the Islamic Movement includes tens of thousands of Bedouin, who have become a major demographic threat.

Except for Be’er Sheva, the Bedouin population is the overwhelming majority in the Negev, thanks primarily to the government’s blind eye to bigamy. They have squatted on thousands of square miles of state land, including areas adjacent to IDF bases.

Darwish’s “peace march” proposal is like the American-backed “peace process,” which the Palestinian Authority pursues until it no longer can achieve its objective of a non-Jewish Israel.

They called that “peace.”

The Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) and police have shut down a Hamas-affiliated organization in Nazareth that promoted unrest on the Temple Mount.

The offices of Amara al-Aqsa wa al-Muqadasat, a group founded in 2009 by the Islamic Movement that was behind a series of Temple Mount riots, has ties with Hamas and has the goal of preventing “Jewish domination” of the Temple Mount, according to the Shin Bet..

“This activity led to an escalation of tensions on the Temple Mount, which promotes disturbances that frequently break out there, and undermines the security of visitors to the site, while harming Israeli sovereignty at the site,” it said.

A Hamas official captured by the Shabak (Israel’s General Security Service) last month spilled the beans during his interrogation on how Hamas operates and is funded, particularly in Jerusalem.

Mahmoud Toameh was caught trying to sneak into Israel from Jordan, the Shabak announced on Thursday.

One of the more important pieces of information Toameh revealed was how Hamas works with the Israeli-Arab Islamic Movement to keep Jews off the Temple Mount – the Jewish people’s holiest site.

Hamas pays hundreds of men between NIS 4000 to NIS 5000 a month to always be on the Temple Mount and to harass and throw stones at Jews who go up to visit the holy site.

JewishPress.com has published more than once these past few months, photos of Muslims waving Hamas flags on the Temple Mount, after rioting.

Toameh also linked the Islamic Movement’s Northern Division Raed Salah directly to Hamas.

One of the ways Hamas receives money from overseas is through real estate deals originating in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. Iran was a major funder of Hamas, until it couldn’t afford to anymore. But with international sanctions quickly falling by the wayside thanks to the US, that could quickly change, and we can once again see Tehran funding Hamas.

And of course, one is not surprised to learn that Hamas is also linked to the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Palestinian Authority has embarked on a daily campaign to solidify ties with Bedouin protesters in the Negev, where the Jews are an increasingly smaller minority outside of Be’er Sheva.

“Hundreds of Palestinians with Israeli citizenship demonstrated in Beersheba outside of the office for the Authority for the Regulation of Bedouin Settlement in the Negev on Thursday to protest ongoing house demolitions,” the Bethlehem-based Ma’an News Agency reported.

“The demonstrators chanted the Palestinian national anthem and waved Palestinian flags,” it added.

It quoted the mayor of the Bedouin city of Rahat, approximately 15 miles north of Be’er Sheva, as calling the authority a “second government which endeavors to displace the Bedouins and steal their lands.”

Sound familiar?

If all of the land in Judea and Samaria and more than half of Jerusalem belongs to the “Palestinians” and almost all of the Negev belongs to Bedouin, the Palestinian Authority can call Israel a “Jewish state” just to mock the idea because the government of Tel Aviv has malignly neglected the Galilee, east of Haifa, and all of the Negev, where Arabs and Bedouin are the majority.

It is not a coincidence and it is not just rhetoric when protesting Bedouin call their land “Palestine.”

The Temple Mount was opened to visitors on Wednesday morning, on the eve of Rosh Hashana, and masked Arabs took advantage of that and began stoning visitors and policemen in the Temple Mount plaza.

Following the stoning, police entered the Temple Mount in force and scattered the stone throwers, many of whom ran into the mosque to avoid arrest.

It is now quiet on the Temple Mount, and the visits are continuing uninterrupted.

This morning, police also turned around dozen of buses transporting Arabs heading to the Temple Mount.

Raed Salach, the head of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, called on his Arab followers to prevent Jews from going up to the Temple Mount today.

Raed Salach was previously convicted of funding Hamas, meeting an Iranian intelligence officer, and attacking a policeman for which he went to jail a few times.

The courts just released Salach again today, following an incitement speech last week, with a restraining order of not to get within 30 kilometers of Jerusalem for the next 180 days.

Israeli Arab extremists and Palestinian Authority clerics held a press conference Sunday to “warn” President Barack Obama “to ensure Muslim sovereignty” when he supposedly will enter the Al Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount when he visits.

The White House has not announced his itinerary, but the President will stay clear of the Western Wall, where he prayed during his 2008 presidential campaign, and the mosque, both for security and political reasons.

Arab activists decided to exploit President Obama’s planned visit to Israel to make another claim to sovereignty over the Temple Mount.

Israeli Arab Sheikh Ra’ad Salah, who is from the Galilee city of Umm-el-Fahm and heads the Northern Branch of the radical Islamic Movement, said that Israel has “no sovereignty over Al-Aqsa or Jerusalem.”

He was quoted by the Al Aqsa Foundation as declaring,  “The US president is likely to visit the Aqsa Mosque, but we should affirm that our position towards such situation will be in conformity with the constants of the Muslim and Arab nations, and the Palestinian people as well as with the issue of Jerusalem and the Aqsa Mosque.”

Sheikh Akrameh Sabri, head of the higher Islamic council and former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, said at the press conference, “Any visitor is welcome to Al-Aqsa, but they should follow the regulations of the Waqf and enter through the Lions’ Gate and not through Mughrabi Gate, to ensure Muslim sovereignty.” Non-Muslims enter the mosque through the Mughrabi Gate which is under Israeli supervision, as opposed to the enter from Lion’s Gate.

The Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority’s Jerusalem minister, Sheikh Ikrima Sabri, insisted that said “that Obama should not be accompanied by an Israeli official during his visit to the holy Mosque because it belongs to Muslims and it is their holy site alone,” according to Hamas’ official website.