The official Palestinian news agency "Wafa" reported that on Tuesday dozens of "settlers" who came from the Maghreb Gate under Israeli police security "invaded" the Al-Aqsa Mosque. In reality, it was a group of roughly two dozen Orthodox Jews who peacefully and according to videos, quietly toured the compound.
The report stated that the Jewish visitors entered the Temple Mount in groups one after the other, they conducted "provocation" tours of Al Aqsa and held “Religious worship ceremonies.” It is important to note that Al Aqsa is but one building on the southwestern side of the compound and non-Muslims are not allowed in. The massive compound, referred to as the Temple Mount is mostly open air and is filled with ruins dating back hundreds, and even thousands of years. Jews are prohibited from entering any of the structures on the compound.
Tens of colonial Israeli settlers are storming Al-Aqsa Mosque under the protection of Israeli occupation forces.@V_Palestine20 pic.twitter.com/BOufrucfyl
— shahd_emad19 (@shahd_emad19) July 17, 2023
Muhammad Hamada, the spokesman for Hamas in Jerusalem, says that "the insistence of hordes of settlers to continue desecrating the courtyards of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, and to perform religious ceremonies and Talmudic prayers in its courtyards, is dangerous aggression towards it and a blatant violation of its sanctity." Hamada’s antisemitic remarks ignore the holiness of the site in the Jewish religion, factually more sacred than it is in Islam.
Hamada accused the Israeli authorities of protecting the "herds of settlers" and of securing their "invasions" to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, thus according to him they bear full responsibility for this "aggression."
In this context, Hamada issued a threat to Israel: "The sword of Jerusalem will remain raised and will not return to its sheath, and the young rebels in Jerusalem and the West Bank will remain bound by an oath and a quick response to any aggression." He called on the Palestinian public in Jerusalem, in Israel, and in central Israel to strengthen the Muslim presence at the Al-Aqsa Mosque to prevent Israel from making unilateral decisions regarding the compound.
A part of settlers' continued storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque under the protection of the occupation forces pic.twitter.com/IAHbNfrR4Z
— AlQastal News (@QastalNewsEn) July 12, 2023
Meanwhile, in the aftermath of the Palestinian Authority’s raid on Jenin to arrest Hamas and Jihad militants, Ismail Haniya, the leader of Hamas, said that the Palestinian terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip will continue to form the basis of the Palestinian struggle against Israel in the Palestinian Authority and strategic support for it in the long term.
In the words he delivered via a conversation with members of the management of the Association of Religious Sages of Palestine, the supreme religious Islamic leadership of the Hamas movement, Haniya said that the Palestinian "resistance" in the Palestinian Authority succeeded in overcoming the challenges, and a significant change is evident in the escalation of the struggle against Israel despite Israel's security coordination and the Palestinian Authority to end the intifada.
Hamas have the gall to complain that Al Aqsa is under threat. As I have previously stipulated the only threat to Al Aqsa is Hamas itself.
— ElBluemountain #NeverAgain 🇮🇱 (@EBluemountain1) July 16, 2023
Take today's incident what do their terrorists do? Go and hide in a Mosque while claiming.⬇️
Yet Wokers refuse to see. https://t.co/LzjH729lpg pic.twitter.com/ja8aT6dO9R
"The current criminal Zionist government poses a great danger to the Palestinian problem, and we must prepare well given its ambitious plans to change the reality in the West Bank, to divide the use of the Al-Aqsa Mosque based on time and place, to expand the settlement and to settle approximately one million new settlers in the occupied West Bank," said Haniya.
