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MOSCOW — Israel’s most famous Orthodox rabbi believes that the disrespect of the Muslim world by westerners and Jews is the root cause of stalled peace between Israelis and the Palestinians.

“There’s no peace in the Holy Land because West doesn’t respect East and Muslim world,” Menahem Froman told the Russian weekly magazine Expert in an interview cited by Interfax news agency on Tuesday, May 20.

“Arrogance, haughtiness, loftiness of Americans and Jews as well are unacceptable for me and for Muslims.”

The rabbi believes that breaking the ignorance barrier and showing respect to the Muslim world is the only way to bridge the Muslim-West gap and make peace in the Middle East.

“To achieve peace, we should understand Muslims.”

Froman, 63, suggests that “representatives of US foreign administration should better take a one-year leave and study Qur’an and Hadith.”

He says Westerners would find a lot of peculiarities in understanding Islam and the Muslim world culture.

“Islam is a spiritual empire and there are things to learn from it.”

Muslim-West relations have badly deteriorated in recent years.

Last January, the Gallup Muslim-West Dialogue Index conducted for the World Economic Forum (WEF) found that most people in Muslim-majority countries believe the West does not respect them.

World Capital

Rabbi Froman, who met several times with late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, believes the Israeli-Palestinian conflict needs a “less political and more spiritual” solution.

He sees the need for new peace formulas in the holy land.

A maverick political activist often called the Jewish religious peacemaker, Froman wants Al-Quds to become the religious capital of all three monotheistic faiths.

“I met with Sheikh Ahmed Yasin and we concluded that supreme authority in the Holy Land belongs to the Almighty,” he told the Russian weekly, referring to Hamas spiritual leader who was assassinated by Israel in 2004.

“I think we can consider Jerusalem’s status the same way. Why don’t give Jerusalem a status of world’s capital!”

Froman, who has long campaigned a peaceful solution for the conflict, is organizing a group of Israeli rabbis and Palestinian scholars to work out a religious agreement concerning the holy city.

Al-Quds is home to Al-Haram Al-Sharif, which includes Islam’s third holiest shrine, Al-Aqsa Mosque, and represents the heart of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Israel captured the holy city in the six-day 1967 war and later annexed it in a move not recognized by the world community or the UN.

Since the annexation, Israel has been seeking to “Judaize” Al-Quds through a series of restrictions and arbitrary moves.

Palestinians want the city to be the capital of their future independent state.

Source: http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?c=Article_C&cid=1209357752305&pagename=Zone-English-News/NWELayout