Israel set to outlaw Islamist group

Israeli Internal Security Minister Gilad Erdan said on Monday he intended to ban radical Islamic group Hizb ut-Tahrir calling its ideology "identical" to that of the Islamic State group.

Erdan would be having talks over the next few days "in order to declare this group illegal," a police statement said.

Hizb-ut Tahrir (The Party of Freedom) "contests Israel's right to exist and supports the establishment in its place of an Islamic caliphate", the statement said.

"Hizb ut-Tahrir is mainly active in Jerusalem around the Temple Mount (the Al-Aqsa mosque compound) where this organisation's leaders spread their extremist message", it added.

"It is inconceivable that an organisation inciting violence and supporting terrorism and the ideology of Daesh (IS) can act in Israel," the statement quoted Erdan as saying.

Founded in Jordan in 1953, the group advocates the re-establishment of the caliphate across the Muslim world, and also regularly accuses the Palestinian Authority of colluding with Israel.

The Al-Aqsa mosque compound is one of the most potent symbols of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Clashes frequently erupt there between Israeli police and Palestinians who suspect Israel of seeking to change rules governing it.

It is the third holiest site in Islam after Mecca and Medina.

Jews call it Temple Mount and consider it their most sacred site as the location of the first and second temples, destroyed by the Babylonians and the Romans.

The compound is in east Jerusalem, occupied by Israel in 1967 and later annexed in a move never recognised by the international community.

Source: AFP