RAMALLAH: Palestinian worshippers at Al-Aqsa Mosque were attacked by Israeli police again on Thursday, a day after being forcibly expelled from the compound to allow dozens of Israeli settlers to enter for the Passover feast.
The tightened restrictions had led to a steep drop in the number of worshippers at the mosque, officials said, with just 20,000 attending the taraweeh prayer on Wednesday, down from 80,000 the day before.
Hundreds of worshippers performed the fajr prayer on the thresholds of Al-Aqsa, but as soon as it ended, Israeli forces removed them from the area.
Police allowed fewer than 40 Palestinians to enter the mosque on Thursday morning.
The Israeli extremist Temple organizations have called on their supporters to storm Al-Aqsa during the Jewish Passover that ends next week.
Omar Al-Kiswani, director of Al-Aqsa Mosque, told Arab News that several Muslims were unable to offer the fajr prayer on Thursday because of Israeli restrictions, a heavy military deployment at the gates and a lockdown in the West Bank that will remain in place until Saturday.
A total of 199 settlers had stormed Al-Aqsa under the protection of the Israeli police on Thursday, he said.
Experts said the cost of the damage caused by Israeli police inside the mosque on Wednesday could run into the tens of thousands of dollars. Precious glass windows, doors, Qur’an libraries and a clinic were all damaged.
Al-Kiswani said this had become a policy of the occupation forces during their crackdown at the holy site.
The third Friday of Ramadan is set to come amid a strict security situation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It is not known if the Israeli authorities will allow worshipers to reach Al-Aqsa.
Also, the third-Friday sermon will be a challenge for the preacher who could be accused of incitement against the Israeli authorities.
Al-Kiswani said Al-Aqsa preacher Mohammed Sarandah was summoned by Israeli security authorities before the start of Ramadan and accused of inciting worshippers. He was removed from Al-Aqsa for two months.
“We are more concerned about calm in Al-Aqsa Mosque than the Israelis because calm attracts more worshipers during Ramadan,” Al-Kiswani said, adding that an intervention by Arab and Islamic countries could stop Israeli incursions into the mosque.
On Thursday, Jordan and Palestine submitted a joint request to the UN Security Council to hold a closed-door emergency session on Friday to discuss Israeli violations at Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Jerusalemites told Arab News that the repressive measures there were intended to embarrass Jordan and prove that the Jordanian leadership was unable to protect the sacred site.
Jordan has been the official custodian of Muslim and Christian holy places in Jerusalem since 1924. For Muslims, Al-Aqsa represents the world’s third-holiest site.
Fatah’s prominent leader in East Jerusalem, Ahmed Ghuneim, said the Israeli tampering with the status quo at Al-Aqsa constituted a threat to Jordan and would destabilize its internal security and stability.
Political analyst Ghassan Al-Khatib told Arab News that Israel’s right-wing government was deceiving Jordan by giving it promises to preserve the status quo at Al-Aqsa, while Israelis were taking advantage of its lack of power.
Jerusalemites said the Israeli occupation had used different methods to reduce the number of Palestinian worshipers at Al-Aqsa over the past two decades to allow settlers to storm it and carry out their religious rituals without significant resistance.
Meanwhile, a 15-year-old Palestinian boy, Khader Ghurab, was injured after being shot by a settler in the old city of Jerusalem late on Wednesday.
Palestinian worshippers at Al-Aqsa face second day of harassment by Israeli police
https://arab.news/vacps
Palestinian worshippers at Al-Aqsa face second day of harassment by Israeli police
- Attacks come after Muslims forcibly expelled from holy site on Wednesday
- Several worshippers unable to perform daily prayers, mosque director says
Israel calls ICC prosecutor’s bid for PM arrest warrant a ‘historical disgrace’
The minister added that Israel would establish a special committee to fight the ICC prosecutor’s efforts to secure a warrant
JERUSALEM: Israel on Monday slammed as a “historical disgrace” an application by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court for an arrest warrant for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The prosecutor, Karim Khan, applied for arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant as well as top Hamas leaders on suspicion of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Foreign Minister Israel Katz said that Khan “in the same breath mentions the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defense of the State of Israel alongside the abominable Nazi monsters of Hamas — a historical disgrace that will be remembered forever.”
The prosecutor said he was seeking warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant for crimes including “wilful killing,” “extermination and/or murder” and “starvation.”
Katz denounced the move as a “scandalous decision” that amounted to “a frontal attack... on the victims of October 7” when Hamas launched their attack on Israel, sparking the Gaza war.
The minister added that Israel would establish a special committee to fight the ICC prosecutor’s efforts to secure a warrant, and also embark on a diplomatic push against it.
Katz said he planned to “speak with foreign ministers in leading countries of the world so that they oppose the prosecutor’s decision and announce that, even if orders are issued, they do not intend to enforce them on the leaders of the State of Israel.”
35,562 Palestinians killed in Gaza offensive since Oct. 7 — health ministry
- 106 Palestinians were killed and 176 injured in the past 24 hours
DUBAI: More than 35,562 Palestinians have been killed and 79,652 injured in the Israeli military offensive on Gaza since Oct. 7, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Monday.
One hundred and six Palestinians were killed and 176 injured in the past 24 hours, the ministry added.
Source close to Hezbollah says 4 dead in Israeli strikes on Lebanon
- The source close to Hezbollah told AFP that “at least four Hezbollah fighters were killed in Israeli raids on two different sites in southern Lebanon“
- The Israeli military said fighter jets struck “a Hezbollah terrorist cell”
BEIRUT: A source close to Hezbollah said four fighters were killed Monday in south Lebanon, with the Iran-backed group announcing two dead and a retaliatory attack, while Israel claimed strikes.
Hezbollah, a Hamas ally, has traded near daily cross-border fire with Israeli forces since the Palestinian group’s October 7 attack on southern Israel that sparked the war in Gaza.
The source close to Hezbollah told AFP that “at least four Hezbollah fighters were killed in Israeli raids on two different sites in southern Lebanon,” identifying the locations as Naqura on the coast and Mais Al-Jabal, a border village to the east.
The Shiite Muslim movement said two of its fighters, both from Naqura, had been killed, without providing further details.
The Israeli military said fighter jets struck “a Hezbollah terrorist cell” and a launch post in the Mais Al-Jabal area, while Israeli army “artillery fired to remove a threat” in the Naqura area.
Hezbollah said it launched a heavy rocket attack at an Israeli army barracks in the country’s north “in retaliation” for the Naqura strike, while also announcing other attacks on Israeli positions.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency (NNA) reported Israeli strikes on Mais Al-Jabal and Naqura, where it said Israel fired near Hezbollah-affiliated rescue personnel and wounded a civilian.
The fighting has killed at least 423 people in Lebanon, mostly militants but also including 82 civilians, according to an AFP tally.
Israel says 14 soldiers and 11 civilians have been killed on its side of the border.
The violence has raised fears of all-out conflict between Hezbollah and Israel, which went to war in 2006.
War monitor says Israeli strikes kill six pro-Iran fighters in Syria
- A Hezbollah source said that at least one fighter from the group was killed in Israeli strikes in the Qusayr area
Beirut: A war monitor said at least six pro-Iran fighters were killed Monday in Israeli strikes in Syria near the Lebanese border, in an area where Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah group holds sway.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said “Israeli strikes targeted two positions of pro-Iran groups in the Homs region,” including “a Hezbollah site in the Qusayr area” near the border where “six Iran-backed fighters were killed.”
The Observatory did not specify their nationalities.
A Hezbollah source told AFP that at least one fighter from the group was killed in Israeli strikes in the Qusayr area.
Israel rarely comments on individual strikes in Syria but has repeatedly said it will not allow its arch-enemy Iran to expand its presence there.
On Saturday, the Observatory said an Israeli drone strike near the Lebanese border targeted a vehicle carrying “a Hezbollah commander and his companion,” without reporting casualties.
Hezbollah did not announce any deaths among its ranks on Saturday.
On May 9, Israeli strikes on Syria targeted facilities belonging to Iraq’s Al-Nujaba armed movement, the Observatory and the pro-Iran group said, with Damascus saying an unidentified building was attacked.
The Israeli military has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria since the outbreak of the civil war in its northern neighbor in 2011, mainly targeting army positions and Iran-backed fighters including from Lebanon’s Hezbollah group.
But the strikes increased after Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip began on October 7, when the Iran-backed Palestinian militant group launched an unprecedented attack against Israel.
Syria’s war has killed more than half a million people and displaced millions more since it erupted in 2011 after Damascus cracked down on anti-government protests.
ICC prosecutor seeks arrest warrant for Israeli and Hamas leaders, including Netanyahu
- Karim Khan believes Benjamin Netanyahu, Yoav Gallant and three Hamas leaders are responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity
THE HAGUE, Netherlands: The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court said Monday he is seeking arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in connection with their actions during the seven-month war between Israel and Hamas.
Karim Khan said that he believes Netanyahu, his defense minister Yoav Gallant and three Hamas leaders — Yehia Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh — are responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip and Israel.
The prosecutor must request the warrants from a pre-trial panel of three judges, who take on average two months to consider the evidence and determine if the proceedings can move forward.
Israel is not a member of the court, and even if the arrest warrants are issued, Netanyahu and Gallant do not face any immediate risk of prosecution. But Khan’s announcement deepens Israel’s isolation as it presses ahead with its war, and the threat of arrest could make it difficult for the Israeli leaders to travel abroad.
Both Sinwar and Deif are believed to be hiding in Gaza as Israel tries to hunt them down. But Haniyeh, the supreme leader of the Islamic militant group, is based in Qatar and frequently travels across the region.
There was no immediate comment from either side.
Israel launched its war in response to an Oct. 7 cross-border attack by Hamas that killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 250 others hostage. The Israeli offensive has killed over 35,000 Palestinians, at least half of them women and children, according to the latest estimates by Gaza health officials. The Israeli offensive has also triggered a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, displacing roughly 80 percent of the population and leaving hundreds of thousands of people on the brink of starvation, according to UN officials.
Speaking of the Israeli actions, Khan said in a statement that “the effects of the use of starvation as a method of warfare, together with other attacks and collective punishment against the civilian population of Gaza are acute, visible and widely known. ... They include malnutrition, dehydration, profound suffering and an increasing number of deaths among the Palestinian population, including babies, other children, and women.”
The United Nations and other aid agencies have repeatedly accused Israel of hindering aid deliveries throughout the war. Israel denies this, saying there are no restrictions on aid entering Gaza and accusing the United Nations of failing to distribute aid. The UN says aid workers have repeatedly come under Israeli fire, and also says ongoing fighting and a security vacuum have impeded deliveries.
Of the Hamas actions on Oct. 7, Khan, who visited the region in December, said that he saw for himself “the devastating scenes of these attacks and the profound impact of the unconscionable crimes charged in the applications filed today. Speaking with survivors, I heard how the love within a family, the deepest bonds between a parent and a child, were contorted to inflict unfathomable pain through calculated cruelty and extreme callousness. These acts demand accountability.”
After a brief period of international support for its war, Israel has faced increasing criticism as the war has dragged on and the death toll has climbed.
Israel is also facing a South African case in the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide. Israel denies those charges.
