AL-QUDS (Dispatches) – For the ninth day in a row, Zionist troops continued to bulldoze the Yusufiya cemetery near Al-Aqsa Mosque in the occupied city of Al-Quds on Tuesday, local media reported.
The head of the Islamic Cemeteries Care Committee, Mustafa Abu Zahra, said in a statement that occupation municipality crews continued “works of Judaization and vandalism in the cemetery as they bulldozed the vicinity of its entrance, to potentially establish a public garden.”
Abu Zahra warned of the “continued attacks and violations by the Zionist regime at the cemetery,” noting that the occupation authorities tightened their siege on the cemetery “after working for a week to construct a wall separating the Martyrs’ Monument and the cemetery.”
The Yusufiya cemetery was established at the beginning of the Muslim conquest of Al-Quds, but it was restored and expanded during the reign of Salah Al-Din Al-Ayyubi. After the city was occupied in 1967, the occupying regime’s municipality took possession of the section that includes the graves of martyrs.
The occupying regime seeks to turn this part of the cemetery, which includes the Martyrs’ Monument where Palestinians and Jordanians who fought in the 1967 war are buried, into a public park.
In another development, some 130 Zionists desecrated the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Al-Quds on Wednesday, the Palestinian Information Centre reported.
At least 126, including 55 students of Zionist regime institutes and ten regime officials, entered the Mosque in groups through the Mughrabi Gate and toured its courtyards under regime troops’ escort, according to local sources.
A number were seen performing prayers or rituals during their tours at the Islamic holy site.
Al-Aqsa Mosque is exposed to daily desecration by Zionists, under the regime’s escort. While they are present in the compound, entry restrictions are imposed on Muslim worshippers.
Furthermore, a group of lawyers said in a complaint filed with the International Criminal Court on Wednesday that the Zionist regime is systematically targeting journalists to prevent coverage of its human rights violations.
The lawyers are working on behalf of four Palestinian journalists - Ahmed Abu Hussein, Yaser Murtaja, Muath Armaneh and Nedal Eshtayeh - who were killed or maimed by Zionist snipers while reporting from demonstrations in Gaza.
Three of the journalists were shot during protests in 2018 and 2019; Eshtayeh was shot in May 2015.
They were wearing vests marked PRESS when they were shot, and are among 46 Palestinian journalists killed in the occupied territories since 2000 without any accountability, their legal team said.
“Israel systematically targets, attacks, maims and kills journalists to prevent accountability for its human rights violations,” said Tayab Ali, a partner at London-based Bindmans, one of the law firms involved. “This cannot be allowed to continue.”