A Saudi football delegation visited east Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque compound on Monday as part of a groundbreaking trip to play a match in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
The trip for Tuesday's World Cup qualifier match marks a change in policy for the Kingdom, which has previously only played against Palestine in third countries to avoid seeking Israeli permission to travel to the West Bank.
Saudi staff visited the Al-Aqsa compound on Monday and prayed there, said Omar al-Jaafar, spokesman for the Palestinian Football Association.
The highly sensitive holy site is in the part of the city occupied by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed in a move never recognized by the international community.
It is the third-holiest site in Islam after Makkah and Madinah, while it is the most sacred for Jews, who refer to it as the Temple Mount.
Housing the Al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock, it is the site of frequent tension between Israelis and Palestinians.
Jews are allowed to visit but not pray there to avoid provoking tensions, with Palestinians fearing Israel will seek to exert greater control over it.
Israel considers all of Jerusalem its capital, while the Palestinians see the eastern sector as the capital of their future state.
"It is a sports delegation that has nothing to do with politics," Al-Aqsa director Omar al-Kiswani said. "The delegation includes around 22 people ... They have the right to visit the mosque."
