Tamimi needs his meds (From Pope John Paul II’s visit to Israel in 2000):

Later that afternoon, a tripartite interreligious meeting, on which John Paul had insisted, illustrated just how difficult “the dialogue” is, in and around Jerusalem. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem had refused to participate; Chairman Arafat had delegated Sheik Taysir Tamimi, an Islamic judge from the PA, to be the Muslim spokesman. Tamimi and Rabbi Lau flanked the Pope on a dais at the Pontifical Notre Dame Institute. Lau began by speaking of the need for peace and dialogue in everyday life; then, as the New York Times’ Alessandra Stanley wrote, he “put an abrupt end to both by thanking John Paul for ‘your recognition of Jerusalem as [Israel’s] united, eternal capital city.’” The Pope had not done that—the Holy See, which takes no position on the question of sovereignty in Jerusalem, nevertheless insists that access to the city’s holy places and their integrity be secured by an “international statute”—and someone in the audience shouted, “The Pope did not recognize Jerusalem.” Things got more volatile when Tamimi welcomed the Pope, in Arabic, as “the guest of the Palestinian people on the land of Palestine, in the city of holy Jerusalem, eternal capital of Palestine,” and was met by loud applause by the audience. He went on to insist, in a rather frenzied rhetorical style, that there could be no peace in the region until all of “Palestine” was united under “President Yassir Arafat”; more applause followed. The moderator, Rabbi Alon Goshen-Gottstein, tried to save the meeting by reminding those present that they were supposed to have come “as religious people who can put aside our politics.” John Paul spoke briefly and pointedly of religion as “the enemy of exclusion and discrimination, of hatred and rivalry, of violence and conflict,” but shortly after he finished, Sheik Tamimi abruptly got up and left the meeting. It was later explained by a Vatican official that the sheik had leaned over to the Pope before departing and explained that he had a “previous engagement.” One had to wonder precisely what engagement trumped the Pope in the sheik’s mind.

As I recall the reason Sheikh Tamimi left was so that he would not have to shake Rabbi Lau’s hand.