On the occasion of the Egyptian mufti's visit to Jerusalem, I recall what Edward Said wrote in an article titled (Barenboim and the Wagner Taboo):
"In the Arab context, the campaign against "normalization" with "Israel", while more urgent and actual a challenge- after all, [this state called] Israel is practicing modes of daily collective punishment and murder against an entire people, whose land has illegally occupied for thirty-four years. The problem is that Arab governments have economic [such as Egypt gas imports to Israel, that has been recently terminated]and political relationships [such as camp David peace treaty] with Israel while groups of individuals have tried to impose a blanket ban on all contacts with isrealis. the ban on normalization lacks coherence since it raison d'être, Israel's oppression of the Palestinian people, hasn't been alleviated by the campaign (against normalization): how many Palestinian homes have been saved from demolition by anti-normalization measures?... None at all, alas, which why I've said that it is better for a distinguished intellectual to come to Palestine in solidarity with his/her Palestinian comrades, perhaps to teach or give a lecture or help at a clinic, than it to sit at home preventing others from doing so."
Unfortunately, Ali Gomaa is a distiguished Egyptian figure, but his visit for Jerusalem wasn't for solidarity with Palestinians. Rasem Badran's claim that the Mufti didn't even bother to reach Al-Aqsa mosque through the same path the Palestinians do, suffering like they suffer (it takes 7 hours for Palestinians to reach the mosque while the distance between the border point that the Mufti said on his Twitter account that he had entered from the West Bank via Jordan is only 80 km far from Jerusalem)!As Ashraf Botros comments on this that the Mufti's visit wasn't in trade for halting settlements activity or lifting siege on Gaza. For the Palestinian cause, it was worthless. On the contrary, it supports the legitimacy of the Israeli occupation, as Azmi Bishara comments.
"Complete anti-normalization is not an effective weapon for the powerless: its symbolic value is low, and its actual effect is merely passive and negative" Edward Said continues!