Muslims worshippers flocked to Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque compound for the second Friday prayer of Ramadan underneath the heavy presence of Israeli police, an indication of lurking tensions within the holy metropolis.
“We feel lucky to be at Al-Aqsa while hundreds of thousands are deprived of access to it,” mentioned Mustafa al-Sheikh, a 62-year-old Palestinian who travelled together with his spouse from Anata, a city close to Jerusalem within the occupied West Bank.
The couple had been amongst about 180,000 individuals who prayed on Friday on the mosque compound, in keeping with the non secular physique that administers the traditionally delicate website in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem.
“The prayer went smoothly and peacefully,” Azzam al-Khatib, head of the Waqf Islamic affairs council, instructed AFP.
The Al-Aqsa mosque compound is Islam’s third holiest website and Judaism’s most sacred, identified to Jews because the Temple Mount. It can also be a frequent supply of tensions within the Israeli-Palestinian battle which have soared this yr as conflict rages within the Gaza Strip.
In previous years, violence flared round Al-Aqsa through the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, with Palestinians accusing Israel of more and more proscribing entry to the positioning.
Thousands of cops had been deployed to the realm surrounding the compound on Friday, a few of them closely armed, partly to implement age restrictions imposed on West Bank Palestinians.
Israel has mentioned solely males aged 55 and over and girls older than 50 can be allowed to enter from the territory.
But for a lot of, merely reaching Jerusalem from different components of the West Bank, dotted with Israeli checkpoints, may very well be a difficult feat.
Zainab Ramadan Freij, a 70-year-old resident of the northern West Bank’s Tulkarem refugee camp, mentioned she needed to take a bus at 6:30 am from to make it to Jerusalem — simply over 60 kilometres (40 miles) away — in time for the midday prayer.
Once contained in the compound, worshippers rejoiced and took photographs on Al-Aqsa’s iconic rock stairs.
“My friend Lina has been in America for 20 years. I want to send her these pictures because she loves Al-Aqsa and misses it,” mentioned Rabab Hadiya, a 49-year-old instructor from Jerusalem.
Just two weeks in the past, mass prayers on the compound resulted in clashes between Palestinians and Israeli forces, however thus far Ramadan has handed with none main incident.
Kobi Michael, a senior researcher at Israeli think-tank the Institute for National Security Studies, attributed the relative calm to a number of coverage choices.
Officers had been instructed to be notably cautious and police had been monitoring social media for incitement, Michael instructed AFP.
He additionally mentioned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had reined within the firebrand Israeli minister overseeing the police power, who had advised barring all West Bank residents from the revered mosque.
“Netanyahu himself intervened” to strip National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir of his “authority on the issue of Palestinians’ access to Al-Aqsa during Ramadan”, Michael mentioned.
In his sermon, the preacher spoke of Palestinians struggling starvation within the war-battered Gaza Strip.
“Do not forget and remember your brothers in Gaza who sleep without food in a tent or in a destroyed house”, he mentioned.
This message resonated with 69-year-old Mohammad Abu Arar, whose spouse’s household in Gaza are at present sheltering in tents within the far-southern metropolis of Rafah.
“We pray for our people there to be safe and for the war to end peacefully, from the most sacred place for us,” mentioned Abu Arar.
Israel’s army marketing campaign in opposition to Hamas has killed at the very least 32,070 folks in Gaza, most of them girls and kids, in keeping with the Hamas-ruled territory’s well being ministry.
It was triggered by Hamas’s unprecedented assault on southern Israel on October 7 that resulted within the deaths of about 1,160 folks, largely civilians, in keeping with an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
International mediators had aimed for a brand new truce earlier than Ramadan, however greater than two weeks into the holy month and practically six months into the conflict, no settlement has been reached.
Source: www.anews.com.tr