Protesters said ‘Hands off Al Aqsa’ during mass protests in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle in London (picture: Guy Smallman)
Activists have called emergency protests in solidarity with Palestine on Friday after Israel launched two consecutive nights of attacks on worshippers in Jerusalem.
Israeli police stormed the compound of the Al-Aqsa mosque in the occupied Palestinian city of Jerusalem on Wednesday night. They forcibly removed worshippers from its prayer halls and the surrounding yards and gardens, firing tear gas and stun grenades.
It followed a similar raid late on Tuesday evening, when Israeli forces invaded the mosque and assaulted worshippers. Videos of the assault showed the cops standing over Palestinians on the ground, beating them with batons and rifle butts.
The pro-Palestine Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Campaign reported, “Palestinians were violently beaten and electrocuted, hundreds were injured and denied medical care. Over 500 were detained.”
Following dawn prayers on Wednesday, Israeli forces raided the compound yards, firing rubber-coated bullets at worshippers.
Police forcibly dispersed worshippers and prevented them from praying before accompanying Israelis to the holy site.
As some Palestinians fought back, news reports from outlets such as the BBC described the events as “clashes” resulting from “tensions” between Muslims and Jews wishing to pray at the same sites during Ramadan and Passover.
In fact, it’s about much more than religion. It’s about Palestinians’ right to live and worship freely in their own city.
Al-Aqsa Mosque and the surrounding Old City are centres of Palestinian life in Jerusalem, especially during Ramadan. But Israel has kept this area under military occupation since 1967 and wants to claim it for its own, pushing Palestinians out.
The state uses apartheid laws to evict Palestinians, demolish their homes and remove their residency rights constantly. And its police clear the way for Israeli settler activists who seek the destruction of the mosque to stage provocative acts of worship there.
Similar Israeli attacks on Palestinians during Ramadan in 2021 sparked a mass Palestinian uprising. This year, Israeli police flooded Jerusalem with 2,000 cops in the run up to Ramadan, telling Israeli newspapers it wanted to avoid “escalating tensions.”
Yet Israel’s government is made up of right wing parties who come from the settler movement—and have promised its supporters they’ll get what they want. In response to a crisis engulfing Israeli politics, it has sought to appease its supporters with promises of more violence on Palestinians.
And it’s pushing ahead with plans to give nationalist minister Itamar Ben-Gvir his own state militia—a national guard to occupy Palestinian cities inside Israel’s borders. The Israeli raids on Al-Aqsa could mark the beginning of an intensified assault on Palestinians everywhere.
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