A view of the Qubbat al-Sakhra (Dome of the Rock) at Al-Aqsa mosque compound, where the first qibla of Muslims, in Jerusalem on April 19, 2024 [Mostafa Alkharouf – Anadolu Agency]
Qatar has strongly condemned the storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque by the Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir under the protection of occupation forces.
In a statement issued yesterday, the Qatari Foreign Ministry stated that repeated attempts to undermine the religious and historical status of Al-Aqsa Mosque are not only an attack on Palestinians but also on over two billion Muslims worldwide.
It also warned about the continuation of the aggressive policies adopted by the Israeli government in the occupied Palestinian territories, highlighting their impact on increasing violence in the region and undermining efforts for a two-state solution and achieving a comprehensive, just and sustainable peace.
Qatar reaffirmed its steadfast position on justice for the Palestinian cause and the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people, including their full right to practice their religious rituals without restrictions and to establish their independent state based on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Earlier yesterday, extremist minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque with a group of settlers. They were heavily guarded by occupation police. This is thought to be part of his efforts to mark the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah.
Itamar Ben-Gvir in June 2021. Photo: Wikimedia Commons / שי קנדלר
Following ICC’s issuance of arrest warrants against top Israeli officials over Gaza’s genocide, Ben-Gvir bluntly threatened to escalate the situation in the West Bank, confirming Israel’s disregard of international law.
Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir stormed Ibrahimi Mosque in the city of Hebron (Al-Khalil) in the southern occupied West Bank on Friday, November 22, accompanied by thousands of Israeli settlers.
A Palestinian citizen from a local committee working to defend Hebron city from Israeli violations told Anadolu Ajansı that Ben-Gvir and the settlers escorting him performed Talmudic rituals for the Jewish holiday Chayei Sarah (Life of Sarah) inside the mosque. He added that the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) imposed a curfew on the old city of Hebron, where the Ibrahimi Mosque is located, banning Palestinians from reaching the area during the settlers’ raid.
Meanwhile, the director of the Ibrahimi Mosque Mutaz Abu Sneineh informed media outlets that the IOF closed the mosque to Muslim worshipers and employees through Saturday evening. The Ibrahimi Mosque itself has also been the site of numerous settler attacks. In 1994, extremist settler terrorist Baruch Goldstein entered the mosque during a prayer and open fired, killing 29 Palestinian worshippers and injuring over 100.
While settler violence against Palestinians has a long history that goes back to the period of the British Mandate in Palestine, the rise of extremist leader Ben-Gvir since 2019 has been accompanied by a sharp uptick in attacks and provocative acts. Ben-Gvir has been labelled by Israeli and western media alike as a provocateur, pyromaniac, ultranationalist, and an extremist settler.
Ben-Gvir has been part of Netanyahu’s government, playing a key role in shaping politics and decision making, since 2022 as the Minister of National Security. Ben-Gvir’s illegal attacks and provocations would not be possible without his government’s policies and rhetoric which explicitly back settler violence.
Israel’s new Defense Minister, Yisrael Katz, announced on Friday the suspension of administrative detention for Israeli settlers who carry out attacks against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. The Palestinian Authority slammed Katz’s decision as it would further encourage settlers to commit more crimes against Palestinians.
In a statement issued on Friday, the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates said that Katz’s decision “would encourage supremacist colonists to commit acts of terrorism against Palestinians and their properties and further foster their impunity.” The Ministry also called for effective international action to restrain settler “militias” and protect the Palestinians from their violence.
Katz’s decision may be seen as part of the plan recently declared by Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich for the West Bank annexation early November. The plan was re-iterated by Ben Gvir, who called for implementing it in response to the ICC’s issuance of arrest warrants orders for top Israeli officials on Thursday, November 21.
According to analysts, Israeli ministers aim at fueling the situation in the West Bank to find a pretext to end the Oslo Accords which granted the Palestinian Authority self-governance over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and to undermine international efforts for a two-state solution.
Rescue workers use excavators to remove the rubble of a destroyed house hit in an Israeli airstrike, as they search for victims in Aalmat village, northern Lebanon, November 10, 2024
ISRAEL bombed the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza without warning early today, [Sunday, November 10, 2024] killing at least 33 people including 13 children.
Its bombers killed a further 23 people in the Lebanese village of Aalmat, north of Beirut, a day after a bombing raid over the ancient port of Tyre left at least seven dead, including five siblings, three of whom were deaf and mute. Other Israeli bombing over Lebanon killed a further 31 people on Saturday, according to health officials.
The UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA, which Israel has banned, said famine is already taking grip in northern Gaza, where Israel’s invading forces continue to deny access to humanitarian aid.
Israel was forced to deny comments from a commander on the ground, Brigadier Itzik Cohen, last week that no aid would be allowed to enter the north because “there are no residents [ie, non-combatants] left there,” as well as that his declaration “No-one is returning to the northern area. There is no return to the north, and there will not be” reflects a policy of ethnic cleansing in the north — as openly advocated by Israeli ministers including National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir — saying instead it represented a tactical position based on ongoing fighting.
Israeli settler leader Daniella Weiss (center) and other advocates of “Greater Israel” hold up a map showing Jewish recolonization of the Gaza Strip in Palestine during an October 21, 2024 rally in Be’eri, Israel. (Photo: Enes Canli/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“Each of you will witness how Jews go to Gaza and Arabs will disappear from Gaza,” said one prominent Israeli settler.
Hundreds of Israelis including numerous senior state officials gathered Sunday near the Gaza border for a festive two-day rally at which members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and leaders of the settler movement openly spoke of ethnically cleansing Palestinians in the embattled coastal enclave to make way for Jewish recolonization.
“We came here with one clear purpose: to settle the entire Gaza Strip… Every inch from north to south,” Daniella Weiss, who co-founded the extremist settler movement Nachala—which organized the rally backed by Netanyahu’s Likud party—told attendees on Monday as joyous music played in the background.
“We’re thousands of people and ready to move to Gaza at a moment’s notice,” she continued. “October 7 changed history. As a result of the brutal massacre, the Gazan Arabs have lost their rights to be here forever, they’ll not stay here.”
“We plan to take what we have acquired in the years of settling Judea and Samaria and to do the same thing here in Gaza,” Weiss asserted, referring to the historic Jewish names for the illegally occupied Palestinian West Bank territories being gradually usurped by Israeli seizure and settlement. “Each of you will witness how Jews go to Gaza and Arabs will disappear from Gaza.”
Daniella Weiss, one of the leaders of the settlement movement, was a featured speaker at the “Preparing to Resettle Gaza” Conference which took place over two days on Israel’s border with Gaza. Speaking to foreign journalists, she vowed to renew the Jewish presence in Gaza within… pic.twitter.com/SFmNA8SZce
“I want to say to the world: This isn’t just for the Jews. We’re doing this for the benefit of the entire world,” added Weiss, who earlier this year was sanctioned by Canada for inciting violence against Palestinians in the illegally occupied West Bank. “Ending the evil powers is for everyone. I call on the democracies of the world to stand with us. Adopt the values of the Bible.”
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, leader of the far-right Jewish Power party, told attendees: “What we have learned this year is that everything is up to us. We are the owners of this land.”
“Yes, we experienced a terrible catastrophe,” he added. “But what we need to understand, one year later—so many Israelis have changed their thinking… They understand that when Israel acts like the rightful owners of this land, this is what brings results.”
Far-Right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir leads the crowd in song at the “Preparing to Resettle Gaza” Conference, which took place over two days on Israel’s southern border with Gaza.
Ben-Gvir was greeted by eager applause from the crowd. “We are the owners of the… pic.twitter.com/hbVP7XdTSK
May Golan, Minister for social equality and the advancement of the status of women of Israel, told rallygoers, “We will hit them where it hurts—their land.”
“Anyone who uses their plot of land to plan another Holocaust will receive from us, with God’s help, another Nakba,” Golan added, referring to the ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Arabs from Palestine by Jewish militants during the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948. Around two-thirds of Gaza’s population are descendants of Nakba refugees.
Sima Hasson of the group Mothers’ Parade told the audience that “I’m going to say something that not everyone here is prepared to say, but I am, and I know a lot of you are: Conquer, kick out, resettle.”
“I’m not just talking about one area of Gaza,” she continued. “I’m not just talking about northern Gaza. I mean every single sliver of land. It’s the only way we’ll save our boys from constantly going to war.”
“To everyone in Europe who has an opinion about what’s happening here, I say: Don’t get involved,” Hasson added. “Worry about yourselves. Radical Islam is taking over your whole continent. You want to help? Take in the Gazans who we want to leave Gaza.”
Other Cabinet members who spoke at the rally included Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich of the Religious Zionist Party and Negev and Galilee Minister Yitzhak Wasserlauf of Jewish Power. Knesset members in attendance included Ariel Kallner, Avichai Boaron, Osher Shkalim, Tally Gotliv, and Sasson Gueta of Likud; Tzvi Sukkot of the Religious Zionist Party; and Limor Son Harmelech from Jewish Power.
“We need to occupy the complete land of Israel. There are no innocent people in Gaza,” Gotliv toldMiddle East Eye. “Everybody who has refused to leave the north is a collaborator.”
“There are no innocent people in Gaza.”
While numerous Israeli officials called for the recolonization of a Gaza Strip prior to the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack, such calls have accelerated since then. In January, Ben-Gvir, Smotrich, and other senior Israeli officials attended a similar but smaller conference hosted by Nachala on the Jewish recolonization of Gaza.
Last year, Amir Weitmann, who chairs Likud’s Libertarian faction, published a plan examining the economics of forcibly transferring Gazans to Egypt’s Sinai Desert. A separate 2023 proposal by then-Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel, who is also a Likud member, would ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza, forcing them into the Sinai.
Monday’s rally came as Israel’s military continued its relentless 381-day assault on Gaza, which has left more than 152,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing and for which Israel is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
In recent weeks, Israeli forces have intensified attacks on northern Gaza—seen by numerous observers as the part of the coastal strip most likely to be seized by Israel—including Saturday airstrikes in Beit Lahia in which more than 120 Palestinians were killed, wounded, or are missing.
The intensified assault comes as some Israeli troops claim the Israel Defense Forces has launched the so-called “Generals’ Plan,” a blueprint for the starvation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from northern Gaza. The U.S., which provides Israel with tens of billions of dollars in military aid and diplomatic cover, last week warned Israeli leaders against any such “policy of starvation,” which critics countered is already being implemented throughout Gaza with deadly results.
More than 20 Israeli settlements were built in Gaza following Israel’s conquest of the territory during the 1967 Six-Day War. While Israeli troops and settlers withdrew from Gaza in 2005, the besieged enclave is still considered occupied under international law, as Israel maintains a physical and economic stranglehold on the territory.
As in the occupied West Bank, Israel’s settlements in Gaza, as well as the occupation itself, were illegal under international law. In July, the ICJ issued an advisory opinion stating that Israel’s 57-year occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is an illegal form of apartheid that must end “as rapidly as possible.”
However, in language resembling the Palestinian liberation slogan “from the river to the sea,” Likud’s founding platform states that “between the sea and the Jordan [River], there will be only Israeli sovereignty.” On multiple occasions over the past year or so, Netanyahu has publicly displayed maps showing the Middle East in which there is no Palestine and all Palestinian lands are labeled as “Israel.”
Zionist Keir Starmer is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.Vote For Genocide Vote Labour.
Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir. Photo: Wikimedia Commons/ שי קנדלר
Storming the Al-Aqsa Mosque has been one of the Israeli occupation’s provocative policies towards the Palestinian people, exemplifying the fact that the end goal of the Zionist project is incompatible with any semblance of Palestinian sovereignty
In a new assault on sacred places within the occupied Palestinian capital of Al-Quds (Jerusalem), around 1,500 illegal Israeli settlers stormed the Al-Aqsa mosque compound on Tuesday, August 13. The settlers were led by Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir , and Minister for the Development of the Periphery, the Negev and the Galilee Yitzhak Wasserlauf. The attack comes as Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza completes 10 months, and Israel’s continuous provocations have put the ceasefire talks in jeopardy.
The assault was not limited to storming the holy site as Jewish rituals were also performed there in commemoration of the Jews’ fast of Tisha B’Av. According to media reports, Palestinian worshipers were prevented from accessing Al-Aqsa compound during the incursion.
As per international conventions and agreements, including the Jordan-Israel Peace Treaty, only Muslims are allowed to pray within Al-Aqsa compound, also known as Al-Haram al-Sharif (the Arabic term for the Noble Sanctuary).
On July 24, Ben-Gvir declared the permission of Jewish prayers in the so-called “Temple Mount”, the Israeli alleged name for Al-Aqsa Mosque compound. Speaking at a Knesset conference, Ben Gavir stated then: “I was at the Temple Mount last week. I prayed at the Temple Mount and we are praying at the Temple Mount. I am in the political echelon, and the political echelon allows Jewish prayer at the Temple Mount.”
Jordan’s custodianship over Al-Aqsa mosque
In 1924, the Supreme Muslim Council, which was the highest Muslim body in charge of Muslims’ affairs in Mandatory Palestine, decided to assign Al-Hussein Bin Ali, the grandfather of Jordan’s King Abdullah II, to be the custodian of Al-Aqsa Mosque. The custodianship over Al-Aqsa became a legacy of consecutive Hashemite Jordanian monarchs ever since even after Palestine was occupied by Zionists in 1948, who then established their colonial state known today as Israel.
In 1994, the Israeli occupation signed a peace treaty with Jordan, which stipulated Israel’s recognition of Jordan’s role as custodian of Christian and Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem. However, Israeli officials, illegal settlers, and armed forces have recurrently committed flagrant violations in Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, despite the treaty.
Jordanian authorities generally issue condemnations against Israeli violations against Al-Aqsa and Muslim worshipers, who perform religious rituals there. Jordan’s last statement was published after the latest episode on Tuesday, August 13.
“The incursion, carried out under the protection of Israeli occupation forces, coincides with provocative actions by Israeli extremists and restrictions on worshippers’ access to the mosque. This act is a blatant violation of international law and the historical and legal status of Jerusalem and its sanctities, reflecting the Israeli government’s disregard for international laws and its obligations as the occupying power,” Jordan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates said on Tuesday.
The Ministry also reaffirmed that the Jordanian Ministry of Awqaf ( Endowments) and Islamic Affairs is the legal authority responsible for managing all affairs of Al-Haram al-Sharif compound and regulating access to it. Whereas the right of the State of Palestine to sovereignty over occupied Jerusalem was stressed by the Jordanian Ministry, which at the same time assured that Israel, as the occupying power, has no right or sovereignty over the city and its Islamic and Christian sanctities.
Al-Aqsa: a constant trigger point in the struggle against occupation
Al-Aqsa Mosque, in particular, and Al-Quds city in general are national constants that Palestinian have categorically refused to concede along with maintaining Palestinian refugees’ right of return, freeing Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails, liberating Palestine, and ending the Israeli occupation. Therefore, any violations against Al-Aqsa or attempts to change the status quo have always fueled milestone events within the lengthy struggle of the Palestinian people against the Israeli occupation.
A report issued by the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas in January 2024, clarified that the Israeli assaults against Al-Aqsa were among the major factors that triggered Operation Al-Aqsa Flood in October 2023.
The report which is titled “Our Narrative…Operation Al-Aqsa Flood” explained that the operation was a necessary step, and that it was a natural reaction against Israel’s plans to eliminate the Palestinian cause, seize and/or Judaize Palestinian lands, and impose complete control over Al-Aqsa Mosque and other holy sites.
The year 2000 marked another milestone, when the second Intifada, also named Al-Aqsa Intifada, broke out after then-Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon,stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque compound escorted by more than 1,000 heavily armed Israeli police and army personnel.
Sharon’s assault on Al-Aqsa was preceded by other Israeli massacres in the holy site that left scores of Palestinians killed. In 1996, protests erupted across different parts of occupied Palestine after the Israeli occupation authorities opened a tunnel under Al-Aqsa western wall. The Israeli Occupation Forces clashed with protesters leaving 63 Palestinians killed and over 1,600 wounded.
Another bloody massacre took place in 1990, when an Israeli individual attempted to place the cornerstone for a temple inside Al-Aqsa mosque compound. The incident sparked demonstrations by Palestinians within the compound, which were suppressed by Israeli occupation forces’ gunfire, killing 21 Palestinians and wounding over one hundred others.
In 1982, Israeli soldier Harry Goldman stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque, and opened fire at worshipers and guards. Two Palestinians were killed in the incident and 60 others were wounded.
Christians in occupied Palestine, particularly in Jerusalem have also suffered from Israeli oppression and discriminatory acts. The year 2023 witnessed a “notable increase” in attacks against Christians and their property, according to Israeli media reports. Assaults committed by religious Jews on Christian symbols, churches, clergy, nuns, and pilgrims, were documented in videos, circulated widely and condemned by Palestinian Christian clergy and laypersons.
The Zionist entity has adopted an apartheid approach aiming at uprooting Palestinians, dispossessing their land, property, sacred sites, and even their culture and cuisine. However, even after 10 months of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, it is apparent that resistance and resilience have been deeply entrenched in the Palestinian collective perception, and inherently rooted in their conscience.
