JERUSALEM: A group of hard-line activists was removed from the flashpoint Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in east Jerusalem on Wednesday after violating a ban on Jewish prayer there, police said.
The 10 Jews held their prayer-protest as Israelis commemorated Jerusalem Day, marking the establishment of Israeli control over the Old City following its capture in the Six-Day War of 1967.
The hilltop site in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem is known to Muslims as the Haram Al-Sharif compound, which includes Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, and to Jews as the Temple Mount.
The holiest site in Judaism and the third-holiest in Islam, it is central to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and was taken from Jordan in the 1967 war.
Jews are allowed to visit but not pray there to avoid provoking tensions, but Palestinians fear Israel will seek to assert further control over the site.
The site has been the scene of frequent incidents when Jews try to break the rule and police or Muslim guards intervene to stop them.
The 10, who appeared to be minors in video footage of the incident, were detained by police.
The Returning to the Mountain movement, to which the activists belong, put out a statement calling on the government to take full control of the mosque compound and assert Jewish prayer rights.
In a separate incident, a group of Jews on their way out of the compound began singing the Israeli national anthem.
Police said officers began ushering them away when a number of guards for the Islamic endowments organization, or Waqf, which administers Al-Aqsa compound, attempted to attack the visitors and the officers.
Video footage of the incident shows police scuffling with guards. The visitors were eventually removed and three Waqf guards arrested.
Earlier this month, Israel rejected as “absurd” a UNESCO resolution it said denies Jews’ historical connection to Jerusalem by presenting Israel as an occupying power there.
Israel claims Jerusalem as its united capital, while the Palestinians claim the city’s eastern sector as the capital of their future state.
Jewish radicals ejected from Al-Aqsa Mosque compound
Jewish radicals ejected from Al-Aqsa Mosque compound
Fledgling radio station aims to be ‘voice of the people’ in Gaza
- The electricity crisis is one of the most serious and difficult problems in the Gaza Strip, says Shereen Khalifa Broadcaster
DEIR EL-BALAH: From a small studio in the central city of Deir El-Balah, Sylvia Hassan’s voice echoes across the Gaza Strip, broadcast on one of the Palestinian territory’s first radio stations to hit the airwaves after two years of war.
Hassan, a radio host on fledgling station “Here Gaza,” delivers her broadcast from a well-lit room, as members of the technical team check levels and mix backing tracks on a sound deck. “This radio station was a dream we worked to achieve for many long months and sometimes without sleep,” Hassan said.
“It was a challenge for us, and a story of resilience.”
Hassan said the station would focus on social issues and the humanitarian situation in Gaza, which remains grave in the territory despite a US-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas since October.
“The radio station’s goal is to be the voice of the people in the Gaza Strip and to express their problems and suffering, especially after the war,” said Shereen Khalifa, part of the broadcasting team.
“There are many issues that people need to voice.” Most of Gaza’s population of more than 2 million people were displaced at least once during the gruelling war.
Many still live in tents with little or no sanitation.
The war also decimated Gaza’s telecommunications and electricity infrastructure, compounding the challenges in reviving the territory’s local media landscape. “The electricity problem is one of the most serious and difficult problems in the Gaza Strip,” said Khalifa.
“We have solar power, but sometimes it doesn’t work well, so we have to rely on an external generator,” she added.
The station’s launch is funded by the EU and overseen by Filastiniyat, an organization that supports Palestinian women journalists, and the media center at the An-Najah National University in Nablus, in the occupied West Bank.
The station plans to broadcast for two hours per day from Gaza and for longer from Nablus. It is available on FM and online.
Khalifa said that stable internet access had been one of the biggest obstacles in setting up the station, but that it was now broadcasting uninterrupted audio.
The Gaza Strip, a tiny territory surrounded by Israel, Egypt, and the Mediterranean Sea, has been under Israeli blockade even before the attack on Oct. 7, 2023, which sparked the war. Despite the ceasefire, Israel continues to strictly control the entry of all goods and people to the territory.
“Under the siege, it is natural that modern equipment necessary for radio broadcasting cannot enter, so we have made the most of what is available,” she said.
