Jerusalem: The Islamic Endowments Department in Jerusalem revealed that more than 48,000 Israeli settlers stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque in the year 2022.
Sheikh Azzam Al-Khatib, Director General of the Islamic Endowments and Al-Aqsa Mosque Affairs Department, said on Thursday that the year 2022 was the worst in terms of Israeli violations in the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
He added in a statement, “The intensity and frequency of the incursions increased during this year, bringing the total number of Jewish extremists who stormed from the Mughrabi Gate side of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque to 48,238 extremists.”
Al-Khatib continued in the statement, “The violations did not stop at the militarization of the squares and the conversion of the mosque into a military barracks.”
He added that the violations in Al-Aqsa Mosque during the year came “in light of dangerous and rapid developments led by extreme right-wing Israeli governments that will lead to igniting a religious war in the region and the world.”
Palestinians fear that the formation of the new right-wing Israeli government will exacerbate tensions in occupied Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Al-Aqsa Mosque is subjected to daily incursions by settlers, guarded by the occupation police, the latest of which took place on Wednesday, in an attempt to impose temporal and spatial division in it.
Since 2003, Israel has decided unilaterally to allow settlers to storm Al-Aqsa Mosque, guarded by the Israeli police, despite the objections of the Islamic Endowment.
Al-Aqsa mosque
Al-Aqsa is located on a plaza at Temple mount, which is known in Islam as the Haram-e-Sharif. The mount is also considered the holiest site in Judaism. The most imposing structure on the compound is the Dome of the Rock, with its golden dome. The Western Wall, also known as the Wailing Wall to the Jews, is one side of the retaining wall of the Al-Aqsa compound.
Al-Aqsa is the focus of rival claims on Jerusalem. Both Israel and Palestine have declared it, their capital. In July 1980, the Israeli parliament approved the Jerusalem law and declared it the capital of the state. The 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence also declared Jerusalem the capital. The Palestinian Authority is currently headquartered in Ramallah.
Shortly after the end of the six-day war in 1967, Israel returned to Jordan, the administration and organization of the Al-Aqsa compound. While non-Muslims were not allowed to worship at Al-Aqsa, Jewish individuals and groups made repeated attempts to enter the Temple mount plaza.
Since the late 1990s, around the time of the first Intifada, these attempts began to occur regularly as Jewish settlers began to claim land in and around East Jerusalem. And this led to frequent clashes and tensions in Al-Aqsa.
