AL-QUDS (Dispatches) – Dozens of Zionist settlers have stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in the occupied Old City of Al-Quds under the protection of the regime’s troops in the latest provocation against Palestinian people and their holy sites.
The Islamic Endowment Department in Al-Quds said in a statement that the settlers entered the compound through the Moroccan Gate in the early hours of Sunday to mark a religious occasion.
They performed Talmudic rituals at the site, which is venerated by Jews, Christians and Muslims.
Hardline Zionist legislators and settlers regularly storm the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in the occupied city, a provocative move that infuriates Palestinians. Such mass settler break-ins almost always take place at the behest of Tel Aviv-backed temple groups and under the auspices of the Zionist police in Al-Quds.
The Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, which sits just above the Western Wall plaza, houses both the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
The Jewish visitation of al-Aqsa is permitted, but according to an agreement signed between the Zionist regime and the Jordanian government in the wake of the regime’s occupation of East Al-Quds in 1967, non-Muslim worship at the compound is prohibited.
Earlier this month, a Zionist regime court upheld a ban on Jewish prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, 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 October 8 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.