Al-Aqsa Assaults Continue, Hamas Retaliation Feared

Date: 20 April 2022 - 21:33

News ID: ۱۰۱۸۶۸

WEST BANK (Dispatches) –
Zionist extremists are planning to go ahead with an unauthorized march in Al-Quds on Wednesday that is expected to stoke further tension following a fourth raid of Al-Aqsa mosque by Zionist troops in as many days.
Early this morning, Zionist troops stormed Al-Aqsa, fired rubber-coated metal bullets at Palestinians, locked worshippers in prayer halls, surrounded women in front of the Dome of the Rock, and forcibly removed Palestinians from the mosque’s courtyard to clear the way for settlers.
Zionist settlers later entered the mosque’s complex in groups under heavy protection from armed forces and performed rituals.
Wednesday’s raid is the fifth this month. Far-right Zionist activists and settler groups had announced plans to storm Al-Aqsa this week in large numbers, starting from Sunday, to mark Passover.
At least 650 settlers stormed al-Aqsa on Tuesday, according to state news agency Wafa, after Zionist troops secured their way following a violent crackdown on Palestinian worshippers.
On Sunday, 545 settlers stormed the mosque and 561 more entered on Monday, according to the Waqf.

‘150 Calls in 48 Hours’

The Palestinian Hamas resistance movement has received 150 calls in 48 hours from various parties as mediation efforts attempt to prevent war in the Gaza Strip following repeated violent Zionist raids across the occupied West Bank and East Al-Quds.
A source close to Hamas, told Middle East Eye that the United States, a party not traditionally involved in mediation, has indirectly approached the movement with the aim of maintaining calm on the Gaza front.
More than two million Palestinians are packed into Gaza, an area the size of the U.S. city of Detroit. Palestinians in Gaza have been surviving under a brutal Zionist economic and military blockade since 2006, with the Strip described as “the world’s largest open-air prison”.
A retaliatory missile was fired from Gaza into the occupied territories on Monday, to which the Zionist regime responded a few hours later with air strikes, raising fears of the collapse of mediation efforts, which have so far kept the blockaded enclave away from any direct engagement amid heightened tensions elsewhere.
The developments come as U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, spoke to Zionist, Palestinian and Jordanian leaders to discuss recent violence in the West Bank that has escalated tensions in the region, officials said on Tuesday, and Reuters reports.
Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, told Blinken on Tuesday that “brutal attacks” by Zionist troops and settlers on the Mosque compound and incursions into Palestinian cities and villages” will lead to dire and unbearable consequences,” Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.
Jordan’s King Abdullah said the Zionist regime’s “unilateral” moves against Muslim worshippers at Al-Aqsa Mosque undermined the prospects for peace in the region, state media said.
The monarch, in a call with the United Nations Secretary-General on Monday, blamed the occupying regime for “provocative acts” in the Mosque compound that violated “the legal and historic status quo” of the Muslim holy shrines.