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Photo: Sheikh Raed Salah (uncredited)

JERUSALEM (AFP) -- An Israeli court on Tuesday sentenced firebrand Islamic preacher Sheikh Raed Salah to eight months in prison for inciting Muslims to violence over Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque.

Salah, leader of the radical northern wing of the Islamic Movement in Israel, was convicted in November of inciting "all Muslims and Arabs" in 2007 to "start an intifada (uprising) to support holy Jerusalem and the blessed Al-Aqsa mosque."

In addition to the eight-month sentence, Salah will serve a further eight months if he repeats the same felony within three years, according to a court document.

Salah, who was born in the predominantly Palestinian northern Israeli city Umm al-Fahm in 1958, is no stranger to run-ins with the authorities.

In 2011, he was arrested at the Allenby border crossing between the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Jordan after allegedly striking a member of the security forces who wanted to question his wife.

The previous year, he spent five months behind bars for spitting at an Israeli policeman.

The Islamic Movement is tolerated in Israel but is under constant surveillance because of its perceived links with the militant Hamas movement that controls the Gaza Strip, as well as with other Islamist groups worldwide.

The 2007 offence took place during a demonstration against Israeli construction work near the Al-Aqsa mosque compound, in Jerusalem's Old City, and Salah's speech was followed by clashes during which a number of Israeli policemen were injured.

Fighting between police and Palestinians is frequent at the compound, which sits above the Western Wall plaza and houses the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa mosque, and is Islam's third-holiest site.

It is also Judaism's holiest place, traditionally the site of the first and second Jewish temples.

Demands by Jewish extremists to be allowed to pray there are perceived in the Muslim world as attempts to "Judaise Jerusalem."

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by IMEMC & Agencies

The Israeli Magistrates’ Court, in occupied Jerusalem, has sentenced Sheikh Raed Salah, head of the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement, to eight months imprisonment. He was also sentenced to three years’ probation, to begin after his release.

The ruling refers to the events of February 16, 2007, when Sheikh Salah gave a speech in Wad al-Joz in occupied Jerusalem, after the Israeli Authorities demolished the al-Magharba Gate road of the al-Aqsa Mosque, in occupied Jerusalem, on February 6, 2007.

The Judge said that Sheikh Salah incited violence, and “repeated the words blood and martyrs”, adding that such words “could lead to violence”.

The Sheikh was convicted back in November of 2013.

The Israeli prosecution claimed that, in his speech, Sheikh Salah “attacked Jews”, and said that Israel wants to build its temple on the rubble of the al-Aqsa mosque, after demolishing it.

It added that Salah encouraged violence, and called for violence, particularly when he stated “God willing, the occupation will be uprooted, the same way other occupations were uprooted in the past.”

After the court rendered its ruling, Israeli settler Itamar Ben Gvir attacked several Palestinians in the court and described Sheikh Salah as “a terrorist who belong in jail”.

His statements led to a scuffle before court guards removed him from the courtroom.

Commenting on the ruling, Sheikh Salah said that the decision to imprison him proves the cruel nature of the occupation and its racist policies.

Sheikh Salah has been repeatedly kidnapped and imprisoned by Israel, and several rulings were issued against him, preventing him from entering Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa mosque for six months, each time.