Palestinian ban for leaders of UK and America

The Mufti of Jerusalem, the Palestinians' most senior Muslim cleric, has issued a fatwa barring George Bush and Tony Blair from visiting the "sacred holy land of Palestine".

Sheikh Ikrimah Sabri, who is appointed and paid by Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority, said Muslims were obliged to rise in the face of the Anglo-American "aggression". All Muslims, he insisted, were forbidden to assist the war effort.

He took care not to brand President Bush and the Prime Minister as "enemies of Islam" – which is tantamount to a death sentence – or to call for a jihad (holy war) against the US and Britain. But Arab journalists suggested that was how many devout Muslims would interpret the fatwa.

Sheikh Sabri's fatwa was issued a week after the Greek Orthodox Bishop of Bethlehem announced that the Allied leaders, both practising Christians, would never be allowed to enter the Church of the Nativity. The Greek Orthodox Church, the largest denomination among Palestinian Christians, controls most of the 6th-century basilica, built by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian over the traditional birthplace of Jesus.

Bishop Panaritos told his congregation that the American and British leaders were "murderers" and therefore could not enter the house of God. Their place was in a prison, not a church, he said.

The two decrees reflect boiling hostility in the streets of the West Bank and Gaza Strip to the war.

Muslims streamed out of the mosques after Friday prayers last week chanting: "Death to America! Death to Britain!" and "With blood and soul, we shall redeem Iraq". In Nablus, masked gunmen set fire to cut-out figures of Bush and Blair as well as a huge wooden effigy of an American F-18 warplane.

Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of the militant Islamic group Hamas, urged the Iraqi people to emulate his own "martyrs" and launch suicide attacks against the Allied troops. "Oh, Iraq," his followers responded, "we are coming. We are ready to sacrifice millions."

Mahmoud Zahar, a Hamas political leader, added: "If the crusaders insist on storming Baghdad, they will lose thousands of soldiers. Baghdad is a graveyard for invaders, whose destiny will be hell."

The mufti's fatwa was endorsed by the Palestinian Authority, despite the fact that London and Washington are advocating a Palestinian state and are preparing to publish a "road-map" that is designed to deliver independence by the end of 2005.

The Palestinian Authority hosted the mufti's Ramallah press conference. A cabinet minister sat beside him. Palestinian newspapers carried the story on their front pages yesterday.