Iran's President President Ebrahim Raisi delivered an unprecedented speech to an annual pro-Palestinian rally in the Gaza Strip on Friday.
The conservative leader urged Palestinians to press on with their struggle against Israel in an online speech to hundreds of supporters of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad militant group at a football stadium in Gaza City.
It was a rare display of Iran’s importance to the Hamas militant group that rules the territory.
His speech — the first of its kind to Palestinians — appeared to culminate years of quiet diplomacy aimed at mending a rift between Hamas and its long-time patron, Iran, over the devastating civil war in Syria.
Mr Raisi was speaking on Jerusalem Day, or Al Quds Day after the city’s Arabic name, which falls on the last Friday of Ramadan.
He criticised the Palestinian Authority's recent meetings with Israeli officials in Aqaba, Jordan, and Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt.
A surge of violence in Israel and the West Bank after an Israeli police raid at Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem last week served to undermine the summits, which sought to de-escalate soaring Israeli-Palestinian tensions.
“The initiative to self-determination is today in the hands of the Palestinian fighters,” Mr Raisi said, condemning the Palestinian Authority that rules parts of the West Bank not controlled by Israel.
During the ceremony, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, Yehiyeh Sinwar, celebrated that militants in southern Lebanon, Gaza and Syria had fired rockets into Israeli territory, describing the attacks as a response to the police raid on Al Aqsa Mosque — the third-holiest site in Islam .
“The response came like a simple electric shock,” Mr Sinwar said of the rocket fire.
For the past four decades, Al Quds Day parades have drawn thousands to the streets around the Middle East. The event is most dramatic in Iran, where crowds burn Israeli flags and chant pledges to liberate Jerusalem.
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Winner Firnas, Royston Ffrench, Salem bin Ghadayer.
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Zakat definitions
Zakat: an Arabic word meaning ‘to cleanse’ or ‘purification’.
Nisab: the minimum amount that a Muslim must have before being obliged to pay zakat. Traditionally, the nisab threshold was 87.48 grams of gold, or 612.36 grams of silver. The monetary value of the nisab therefore varies by current prices and currencies.
Zakat Al Mal: the ‘cleansing’ of wealth, as one of the five pillars of Islam; a spiritual duty for all Muslims meeting the ‘nisab’ wealth criteria in a lunar year, to pay 2.5 per cent of their wealth in alms to the deserving and needy.
Zakat Al Fitr: a donation to charity given during Ramadan, before Eid Al Fitr, in the form of food. Every adult Muslim who possesses food in excess of the needs of themselves and their family must pay two qadahs (an old measure just over 2 kilograms) of flour, wheat, barley or rice from each person in a household, as a minimum.
British aristocrat Lord Carnarvon, who funded the expedition to find the Tutankhamun tomb, died in a Cairo hotel four months after the crypt was opened. He had been in poor health for many years after a car crash, and a mosquito bite made worse by a shaving cut led to blood poisoning and pneumonia. Reports at the time said Lord Carnarvon suffered from “pain as the inflammation affected the nasal passages and eyes”. Decades later, scientists contended he had died of aspergillosis after inhaling spores of the fungus aspergillus in the tomb, which can lie dormant for months. The fact several others who entered were also found dead withiin a short time led to the myth of the curse.
