The director of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, Omar Al-Kiswani, denounced on Sunday, August 28th , 2022 a group of settlers’ storming of the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque from the Al-Asbat Gate.

Al-Kiswani considered the settlers’ storming of Al-Aqsa from Al-Asbat Gate a flagrant violation of the current status quo law, which has been recognized since 1967 at Al-Aqsa.

Al-Kiswani added, “We look with seriousness at the behavior of the Israeli occupation police today. 40 settlers stormed the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque in the first group, and when they reached the Gate of Mercy, they sang and applauded, so the occupation police took them out from the Al-Asbat Gate, and then entered some of the group and completed the storming of the squares, and they exited from the Al-Silsilah Gate.”

Al-Kiswani pointed out that the violations practiced by far-right groups and the Israeli occupation forces are done to  win over electoral propaganda, and continued, “Al-Aqsa Mosque is too sacred to be rendered into an electoral propaganda for these extremists.”

He added, “We reject the settlers’ storming of the courtyards of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, whether from the Al-Asbat Gate or the Mughrabi Gate, and we also refuse to break the recognized status quo. The mosque purely belongs to Muslims and does not accept division, and what happened will not give legitimacy, but happened by force of occupation and it’s weapons.”

The Israeli occupation forces allowed a group of settlers to enter through the Al-Asbat Gate, one of the gates of Al-Aqsa Mosque, in a move that occurred for the first time since 1967.

According to local sources, the Israeli occupation forces re-entered them, after they were expelled from it after they performed public rituals during their storming of Al-Aqsa.

Omar Al-Kiswani, director of Al-Aqsa Mosque, explained that 40 extremists stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque.

It is considered against the norm; Settlers storm Al-Aqsa Mosque from Sunday to Thursday through the Mughrabi Gate, under strict protection from the occupation forces, and the settlers consider the matter a historic victory that occurred for the first time since the 1967 war.

As soon as the news spread, there were calls for the settlers to repeat the matter, considering that all the gates of Al-Aqsa Mosque are the gates of the “alleged temple”.

Dozens of Israeli settlers stormed, on Sunday morning, the courtyards of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, under the protection of the occupation police, performing provocative tours, and public Talmudic rituals.

This comes as an attempt to achieve a temporal and spatial change in the status quo of the holy area. That turns the very nature of the ownership of the courtyard of Al-Aqsa mosque.