Palestinian worshippers forced to pray in street as Israel bars Eid access to Al-Aqsa
Israeli authorities have barred Palestinian worshippers from accessing Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Old City for Eid al-Fitr prayers for the first time since 1967.
On Friday morning, Israeli police barricaded the complex’s gates, barring worshippers from gathering near the site and forcing them to pray outside the Old City.
In an unprecedented move since Israel seized East Jerusalem in 1967, the Israeli authorities have effectively sealed off the complex to Muslim worshippers throughout Ramadan, using security concerns amid the war on Iran as a pretext.
The holy month is often the main time of the year when Israel allows limited numbers of Palestinians to access Al-Aqsa, the third holiest site in Islam.
But this year, thousands of worshippers were forced to pray where they could outside the Old City’s gates.
Meanwhile, the streets of the Old City, normally teeming with activity and bedecked with decorations during Ramadan, resembled a ghost town as the authorities placed the entire area under lockdown.
Photojournalist Faiz Abu Rmeleh told Middle East Eye that on Friday large crowds of worshippers chanting Eid praises (or takbeerat) gathered along Salah al-Din Street, which lies outside the Old City.
Rmeleh reported that when Palestinians tried to approach Bab al-Zahra, within the Old City walls, in an attempt to pray as close as possible to the mosque, they were met with stun grenades and tear gas fired by police and pushed back to Salah al-Din.
There, they performed their prayers outside the post office, under a heavy police presence.
The police did not intervene, but immediately after the prayer they forcefully dispersed worshippers, pushing them back even further from the site to Saint George Street.
A group of around 10 young men were searched by the Israeli police and made to stand in a line with their hands raised.
“The Old City remained under strict closure, with entry permitted only to registered residents. This prevented many Palestinians from visiting relatives during Eid, a time religiously and traditionally dedicated to family gatherings and maintaining kinship ties,” Rmeleh told MEE.
Meanwhile, journalist Latifeh Abdellatif said: “Despite being a resident of the Old City, I faced difficulty re-entering my neighborhood and was only allowed access after presenting identification. Family members attempting to visit me during Eid were denied entry.”
On Friday afternoon, shrapnel landed in the Jerusalem district after Iranian missiles were intercepted over the area, near the walls of the Old City.
Footage showed a crater in a road that appeared to be close to the Jewish and Armenian quarters of the Old City.
A wider strategy
Al-Aqsa Mosque, which Jews regard as the Temple Mount and the most sacred place in Judaism, has long been a flashpoint site in occupied East Jerusalem.
While the official position of the Chief Rabbinate has long been that Jews may not enter the site until it is religiously ordained, some Jewish groups have demanded access to the mosque for prayers and even the construction of the Third Temple there.
Palestinians view the closure of the mosque, an emblem of Palestinian identity, as part of a wider strategy by Israelis to entrench control over Al-Aqsa and the Old City, in an attempt to turn the site into a primarily Jewish place of worship under the cover of war with Iran.
This type of transformation has already largely been achieved at Ibrahimi mosque, in the old city of Hebron. Following a deadly settler attack on the site in 1994, which killed around 29 Palestinians, the prayer hall was partitioned. Now, two-thirds of the space is reserved for Jews and the remaining third for Muslims.
Al-Aqsa’s closure follows months of crackdowns on Palestinian worshippers and staff in the Old City, including arrests of Muslim caretakers, restrictions on access to the mosque, and escalating incursions into the site by Israeli settlers.
MEE previously reported that, since the closure, no more than 25 Waqf staff members have been allowed inside the vast mosque complex per shift.
A source told MEE that Israeli authorities even rejected a request for an additional staff member from the manuscripts department to enter the site. This culminated in the arrest of the mosque’s imam, Sheikh Ekrima Sabri, at his home last week.
The crackdown signifies the rupture of a six-decade agreement governing Muslim and Jewish prayer at Al-Aqsa which dates from 1967.
This article was sourced from Middle East Eye.
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