Israel blocks thousands of Palestinians from performing Friday prayers at Al-Aqsa Mosque
Israeli forces prevented thousands of Palestinians from performing Friday prayers at Al-Aqsa Mosque, tightening their week-long shutdown on the religious site amid hostilities with Iran.
Israeli soldiers were stationed around the outer gates of Al-Aqsa Mosque and the gates of the Old City of Jerusalem early on Friday, where they stopped thousands of Palestinians from entering, sources told Middle East Eye.
They said that less than 500 people managed to make it through to the prayer areas and courtyard within Al-Aqsa, a fraction of the number that usually attend the holy site.
Despite heavy restrictions on their daily lives, tens of thousands of Palestinians normally attend Friday prayers at Al-Aqsa each week.
But since 13 July, the mosque has been completely closed off, in the largest shutdown since the Covid-19 pandemic.
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Israel has tried to defend the decision, saying it is based on public safety due to Iranian missile strikes on Israel. Palestinians, however, fear that the conflict is being exploited to impose lasting changes on the status quo at the revered site.
Earlier this week, Israeli authorities said they had opened two gates and would allow a partial reopening of the mosque. However, a senior source from within the mosque, who spoke anonymously to MEE due to fear of reprisals from Israeli authorities, said the announcement was misleading.
He estimated that for every hundred trying to enter the mosque, they were letting in one.
"In short, Al-Aqsa is empty. Even the staff are few in number," he said.
The source said that the gates that workers were allowed to use were being changed frequently by Israeli forces, and were often very far apart in distance.
'The message Israel wants... is that it has complete control over the mosque, just as it has control over Tel Aviv'
- source within Al-Aqsa
He added that due to the arbitrariness of which gates were opened, he had to walk two kilometres to park his car and reach his office, and then a further 1.5km to enter the mosque to pray.
As well as closing gates into the mosque, Israeli forces also closed off entrances into the Old City, restricting the ability of Palestinians who live outside of the city's gates from entering Al-Aqsa.
'The message Israel wants from closing the mosque completely and opening it partially is that it has complete control over the mosque, just as it has control over Tel Aviv,' the senior source said.
Residents told MEE earlier this week that while the mosque was under lockdown, Israelis had unlimited access to the Western Wall Plaza, close to Al-Aqsa's Mughrabi Gate.
"If people don't wake up quickly and push to change the situation, we'll find ourselves facing a new reality," said Fakhri Abu Diab, an activist and expert on Jerusalem affairs.
'The public is being conditioned to accept closures,' said Abu Diab. 'They want to diminish the sanctity of Al-Aqsa in people's minds, to make it seem normal that it's shut down.'
In 2014 and then in 2017, Israeli forces briefly closed the mosque amid heightened tensions in Jerusalem.
The 2014 closure was described as a 'declaration of war' by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas at the time.
Before that, no such days-long closure has been recorded since Israel's occupation of the city in 1967.
Israeli settlers and far-right activists raid Al-Aqsa Mosque almost daily, with their numbers steadily increasing over the past two decades.
In recent months, they have raised the Israeli flag and regularly performed Jewish religious practices in the eastern section of Al-Aqsa Mosque complex, in an area known as Bab al-Rahma. Both actions were previously blocked by Israeli authorities, fearing a Palestinian backlash.
Unsolicited visits, prayers, and rituals by non-Muslims at Al-Aqsa are prohibited under decades-old international agreements known as the status quo. Israeli authorities and settlers frequently violate these norms.
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