Hundreds of Palestinians have entrenched themselves this morning in the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem after the midnight prayer in full Ramadan. The confinement coincides with the attendance of thousands of Jews this Sunday morning at the nearby Wailing Wall to participate in the traditional Birkat Kohanim, a massive priestly blessing that occurs in the middle of Pesaj, the Jewish Passover.
The confinement of hundreds of Palestinians has coincided this Sunday with the assistance of dozens of Jews organized in groups and escorted by the Israeli police accessed the Esplanade of the Mosques. Faced with this situation, the Israeli Police have ruled out the eviction of Al Aqsa to avoid clashes like those experienced last Wednesday and Thursday, which resulted in 350 detainees and 30 injured.
The scenes of tension have taken place this Sunday amid the latest escalation of violence in the Middle East and in the middle of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The escalation of tension began after a heavy exchange of fire between the Israeli Army and Palestinian militias in the Gaza Strip and southern Lebanon, triggered by the repression this Wednesday of the Palestinian faithful by the Israeli police in the Al Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem.
On Thursday, around thirty rockets were fired at Israel from southern Lebanon, to which Benjamin Netanyahu’s government responded with similar attacks against Hamas militias in both Gaza and Lebanon. The Government of Israel also announced this Saturday that it would deploy Army troops in the streets of Tel Aviv after the attack that the previous day had left an Italian tourist dead and seven other people injured.
Tension at the Wailing Wall
According to their religious norms, Jews cannot pray inside the Esplanade of the Mosques, or the Temple Mount for them because it is believed that the Second Temple was built right there, the holiest place for Judaism where they can only pray some rabbis. For this reason, Jews pray from the nearby Wailing Wall, looking towards where the temple was located.
However, in recent decades, parallel to the rise of religious Zionism, more and more rabbis are urging people to enter the Esplanade to pray, violating the status quo agreed by Israel with Jordan in 1967, according to which only Muslims can pray in the area. enclosure -the third holiest for Islam-, where Jews can only enter as visitors.
In fact, to avoid tensions, Israel usually prohibits the entry of Jews to the Esplanade of the Mosques during Ramadan, but religious Zionist groups -in general aligned with the settler movement- have pressured to be able to enter that week of Pesaj, one of the major Jewish holidays.
The prayers of Ramadan and Pesaj that week also coincide with the Catholic Holy Week, which today is also celebrated in the Old City of Jerusalem on Easter Sunday, with masses and processions around the Holy Sepulchre.
Three rockets launched from Syria towards Israel
The Israeli Army has affirmed this Sunday that three rockets were launched from Syria towards its territory on Saturday, although it has specified that only one of them hit its territory and it did so in an unpopulated area. The attacks from Syria are rare but in this case they would have occurred after the increasing Israeli bombardments in that Arab country, where it usually attacks targets linked to Lebanese and Iranian armed groups.
No group has yet claimed responsibility for their shooting, although the Lebanese channel Al Mayadeen pointed to the Al Quds Brigades, the armed wing of Islamic Jihad. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based NGO with an extensive network of partners on the ground, has reported that two rockets were fired from unidentified persons from the Quneitra border governorate.
This population, adjacent to the Golan Heights, is in the hands of the Syrian government and has a growing presence of pro-Iranian militias allied to it, as well as a deployment of the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah. Israel has intensified its airstrikes on Syrian territory over the past month and last Tuesday attacked one of the suburbs of Damascus, in an incident that, according to information from the official Syrian news agency SANA, resulted in the death of two civilians.
