AL-QUDS (Dispatches) – Scores of Zionist settlers on Sunday forced their way into the flashpoint Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Al-Quds, according to a Palestinian agency.
In a statement, the Jordan-run Islamic Waqf Department, which oversees holy sites in Al-Quds, said the settlers entered the site through the compound’s al-Mugharbah Gate under Zionist police protection.
Al-Aqsa Mosque is the world’s third-holiest site for Muslims. Since 2003, the Zionist regime has allowed settlers into the compound almost daily.
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Waqf and Religious Affairs, 34,562 settlers stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in 2021.
The Zionist regime occupied East Al-Quds, where Al-Aqsa is located, during the 1967 Arab-Zionist War. It annexed the entire city in 1980 in a move never recognized by the international community.
The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates condemned the international community’s silence on the Zionist regime’s attempts to Judaize the occupied city of Al-Quds and advance its settlement expansion policies across Palestinian territories.
The ministry, in a statement released on Saturday, said the Tel Aviv regime was racing against time to implement its colonial settlement plans in the occupied Palestinian lands as part of attempts to distort historical, legal and demographic realities in the West Bank.
The statement said such bids were meant to serve the occupying regime’s colonial interests in the occupied Palestinian territories and would actually close the door on the establishment of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state along the 1967 borders, with East Aal-Quds as its capital.
The ministry then denounced the regime’s settlements construction, home demolitions, ethnic cleansing, as well as repressive measures and restrictions imposed by Zionist regime authorities against Al-Quds residents.
It held the Tel Aviv regime fully and primarily responsible for ongoing violations and crimes in Al-Quds and its outskirts, saying that expansionist Zionist measures will eventually perpetuate occupation of Palestinian lands and displacement of Palestinian citizens, and will bolster an abominable apartheid regime in occupied Palestinian territories.