Days of Palestine – Jerusalem
For the sixth consecutive night, Israeli occupation forces (IOF) Thursday night cracked down on Palestinians who gathered at Bab al-Amoud in the occupied city of East Jerusalem and detained three.
Local sources said that heavily-armed police rounded up three young men from Bab al-Amoud, a popular meeting spot for Palestinians to gather and socialize, and chased after dozens of others, pushing them to the Sultan Suleiman Street.
Meanwhile, IOF denied hundreds of Palestinians from the West Bank entry into the occupied city of Jerusalem through the Qalandiya checkpoint to perform the Friday prayers at Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Since the first night of Ramadan, IOF have erected iron barriers to restrict the seating space and the movement of Jerusalemites and set up a mobile police center near Damascus Gate on the second night.
Some 3,000 IOF are deployed in the vicinity of the mosque compound and across the city with the deployment of overt and covert forces at Damascus Gate.
IOF have fired stun grenades and gas bombs toward the Palestinian crowd and indiscriminately and violently assaulted many others in nighttime confrontations that began on the second day of Ramadan.
The current tensions are reminiscent of the 2021 May and Ramadan tensions over the Israeli settler takeover of Palestinian property in Sheikh Jarrah and encroachments upon the mosque compound.
During the 2021 Ramadan month, Jerusalem saw protests and night-time confrontations between Israeli police and Palestinian worshippers, with tensions mounting over the police decision to ban people from sitting on the stairs outside Bab al-Amoud under the guise of implementing the coronavirus restrictions, and its decision to disconnect the power supply to the call to prayer at the mosque compound.
The tensions further simmered following the forced expulsions of Palestinian families from their houses in Sheikh Jarrah.
For many Palestinians in Jerusalem and across the occupied Palestinian territory, Ramadan is directly connected to the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
The Al-Aqsa Mosque compound houses both the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa mosque and is considered the third holiest site in Islam.
Al-Aqsa is located in East Jerusalem, a part of the internationally recognized Palestinian territories that have been occupied by the Israeli military since 1967.
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