WEST BANK (Dispatches) – A Zionist court has upheld a ban on Jewish prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in the occupied Al-Quds, after an earlier lower court’s decision stirred outrage among various Palestinians and across the Muslim world.
Judge of the district court in Al-Quds, Aryeh Romanov, on Friday confirmed that Jews are barred from worshiping openly at the site, and only Muslims are permitted to pray there.
In issuing the ruling, Romanov said the fact that the defendant, a Zionist settler identified as Rabbi Aryeh Lippo, had been caught served as proof that his prayer at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound was overt.
“What is important… is the fact that there was someone who noticed the appellee praying, which evidently shows that the prayer was overt. If it was not overt, no one would have noticed it,” the judge wrote.
Friday’s ruling came after the occupying regime’s public security minister Omer Bar-Lev appealed the lower court’s decision on Tuesday not to regard prayer by Jewish worshipers as a “criminal act” if it remained silent, and warned that “a change in the existing status quo” would spark violent protests and could cause a flare-up.
The judicial decision could have upended a longstanding agreement whereby Muslims worship at Al-Aqsa Mosque – Islam’s third holiest site – while Jews worship at the nearby Western Wall.
Palestinian resistance factions, as well as officials in Jordan, Egypt and other Muslim countries had condemned the regime’s lower court’s decision that “quiet” Jewish prayer should be allowed at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.
Hamas decried the court’s decision as a “blatant aggression” against the sacred site, and a clear declaration of war against Islam and its sanctities.
“The Occupation continues its sinister policies and plans to divide the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound both in terms of time and space. The move also paves the way for further incursions and desecrations by Zionists,” the group said in a statement Friday.