OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (Palestine Foundation Information Center) The Hamas Movement stated that the large-scale raid carried out on Monday by settler mobs into the courtyards of the Aqsa Mosque — under heavy police protection, during which they performed provocative Talmudic rituals — is a renewed crime and a flagrant violation of the sanctity of Aqsa.
In a statement issued Monday, Hamas said that these escalating incursions are part of a systematic Judaization plan led by the fascist occupation government in Occupied Jerusalem, as part of its ongoing attempts to erase the city’s Arab identity and tighten its control over the Mosque.
The Movement called on the Palestinian people in the West Bank, Occupied Jerusalem, and the 1948-occupied territories to “escalate resistance in the face of these fascist schemes targeting our land and holy sites.”
Hamas emphasized the importance of mass mobilization, steadfast presence (ribat), and traveling to Aqsa to thwart attempts by settler groups to impose temporal or spatial division of the Mosque.
It also called on Arab and Islamic states, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), and the Arab League to act immediately and seriously to curb the Israeli aggression in Occupied Jerusalem and Aqsa Mosque, and to stop the comprehensive genocidal war it is waging against the Palestinian people.
For his part, Hamas official Majed Abu Qatish stressed that the escalating settler incursions and their desecration of the Aqsa Mosque require urgent action from all sides to foil the Judaization schemes and restrain the occupation from violating the sanctity of holy sites.
Abu Qatish explained that the data and figures confirm that Aqsa and Jerusalem are experiencing unprecedented levels of violations by the occupation and its settler mobs. These include intensifying marches, Talmudic rituals, and aspirations to completely take over Aqsa Mosque and build their so-called temple.
More than 500 settlers stormed the Aqsa Mosque on Monday morning through al-Magharibeh Gate, under tight protection by Israeli police.
Meanwhile, Aqsa guards thwarted an attempt by three settlers to sneak toward the Dome of the Rock while carrying part of a “sacrificial offering,” coinciding with mass settler raids as part of celebrations for the Jewish holiday of “Shavuot.”
