AL-QUDS (Dispatches) – The occupying regime of Israel’s extremist minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, entered Al-Aqsa Mosque’s courtyards in occupied East Al-Quds on Tuesday, in a move bound to inflame tensions.
A video posted on social media shows Ben-Gvir touring the courtyards with a heavy security detail.
On Monday, the Palestinian movement Hamas warned the Zionist regime that it “won’t sit idly by” if the so-called security minister visits Al-Aqsa Mosque, as he vowed to do on Sunday.
Al-Aqsa Mosque is one of the holiest sites in Islam. Since Israel occupied the site following the 1967 Middle East war, Jewish prayer at the site has been forbidden, though extremist settlers such as Ben-Gvir (some of whom want to demolish Al-Aqsa and replace it with a third Jewish temple) have frequently prayed there under strict security in recent years.
Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh said such “incursions” were an attempt “to turn the Al-Aqsa Mosque into a Jewish temple.”
The Palestinian Authority’s foreign ministry, which is run Fatah, said in a statement that it holds Zionist PM Benjamin Netanyahu “responsible for Ben-Gvir’s storming of Al-Aqsa and its consequences”.
It went on to add that it “strongly condemns the extremist minister Ben-Gvir’s storming of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque and considers it an unprecedented provocation and a serious threat” to regional stability.
Ben Gvir’s visit came hours after reports said that he had agreed to postpone his planned trip following a meeting with Netanyahu, and despite condemnation from the opposition and warnings from Hamas.
The United Arab Emirates, which normalized relations with the occupying regime of Israel in 2020, released a statement condemning the storming of Al-Aqsa.
“The UAE today strongly condemned the storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque courtyard by an Israeli minister under the protection of Israeli forces,” said the statement, avoiding naming Ben-Gvir.
Jordan, which views itself as a custodian of the Temple Mount, said it strongly condemned the visit.
“Jordan condemns in the severest of terms the storming of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and violation of its sanctity,” the Jordanian Foreign Ministry said in a statement, according to the Reuters news agency.
The Saudi foreign ministry also joined the wave of condemnation over “the provocative action by an Israeli official who stormed” the flashpoint site. Netanyahu has frequently expressed hope for progress in normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which has conditioned the establishment of diplomatic ties on the creation of a Palestinian state.
The French embassy in Occupied Palestine called for the “preservation of the status quo of the Holy Places of Jerusalem (Al-Quds). Any gesture aimed at questioning it carries a risk of escalation and must be avoided.”
Hamas spokesman Abd al-Latif al-Qanua said Monday that the planned visit was “another example of the arrogance of the settler regime and their future plans to damage and divide Al-Aqsa Mosque”.
“The Palestinian resistance will not allow the neo-fascist occupation regime to cross the red lines and encroach on our people and our sanctities.”
Netanyahu’s sixth cabinet, the most right-wing regime in Israel’s history, has said that its main guiding policy will be that “the Jewish people have an exclusive and indisputable right to all areas” of the occupied territories, referring to the concept of “Greater Israel” that includes the occupied West Bank, East Al-Quds and other foreign lands.
This is not the first time that Ben-Gvir has stormed Al-Aqsa. In May last year, accompanied by his wife and son, Ben-Gvir posted a picture calling for the destruction of the site to “establish a synagogue on the mountain”.
When former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon made a similar trip to the site in 2000, it sparked the Second Intifada Palestinian uprising.
According to data compiled by Middle East Eye, Zionist forces martyred more Palestinians in the occupied West Bank in 2022 than in a single calendar year since the Second Intifada.
At least 220 people have died in Israeli attacks across the occupied territories, including 48 children. Of the total death toll, 167 were from the West Bank and East Al-Quds, and 53 were from the Gaza Strip.
An additional five Palestinian citizens of occupied territories have been martyred in the same period. Meanwhile, Palestinians have killed at least 29 Zionists, the highest death toll since 2008.