GAZA CITY (Dispatches) –The Palestinian Islamic Jihad group warned the Zionist regime’s authorities on Thursday about targeting the Ibrahimi Mosque in Al-Khalil in the south of the occupied West Bank.
“We warn the occupation [the Zionist regime] against attempts and new settlement plans that target the Ibrahimi Mosque,” said Tareq Selmi, a spokesman for the group.
He said that regime’s plans for constructing a passage and a settler-only elevator aim to control the mosque and to change and obliterate the Islamic and historic nature of the mosque.
Selmi urged residents in Al-Khalil to gather at the mosque to perform prayers that will confirm the identity of the Ibrahimi Mosque.
The Zionist regime’s war ministry said Monday it started a project at the mosque’s courtyards to construct a route that directly links from the parking area to the mosque and an electric elevator.
UNESCO World Heritage Committee decided in July 2017 to include the Ibrahimi Mosque and the old city of Al-Khalil on its World Heritage List.
Hamas also rejected the regimen’s plan, describing it as an “aggression” against Palestinian sanctities.
Hamas spokesman, Hazem Qassem, told Anadolu that the regime’s plan to change the Ibrahimi Mosque’s features and build an elevator is part of “the Israeli ongoing aggression against the sanctities of our people”, adding that “the Israeli occupation is trying to falsify reality, history and facts”.
Qassem explained that the Zionist regime’s measures aim at Judaizing the region in favor of settlement projects, and changing the Palestinian identity in the city of Al-Khalil.
In another development, the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague is weighing the possibility of launching an investigation into the demolition of homes and displacement of dozens of Palestinians in a hamlet in the Jordan Valley.
In a report on Thursday, the Palestinian Information Center said that the ICC prosecutor’s office plans to know what happened to the ill-fated village of Khirbet Humsa.
The petition recounted an incident that occurred last month when Zionist troops demolished homes and residential structures and confiscated the belongings of some 60 Palestinians in the hamlet, situated in an area that the regime’s military deliberately declared as Firing Zone 903.
It was the third demolition campaign of this kind by the occupying regime in a single year.
According to the Israeli rights group B’Tselem, some 2,700 people live in almost 20 shepherding communities in areas declared by the regime’s military as firing zones or adjacent to them in the Jordan Valley.