During the early hours of Wednesday morning, Israeli occupation police forces raided the al-Aqsa Mosque compound and severely beat a number of worshippers at the site. The raid was carried out in order to prevent Palestinian worshippers from remaining inside the Holy Site, at times when extremist Israeli settlers planned to storm the area. The response to the horrifying Israeli attack sparked instant Palestinian retaliation.
On Wednesday, Israeli occupation forces raided the al-Aqsa Mosque compound, the third Holiest site for Muslims, at around 12:00 am. Israeli forces opened fire on worshippers, primarily in the Qibli prayer hall area, shooting worshippers with rubber-coated steel bullets, tear gas, and threw stun grenades. Videos quickly began to emerge from the scene of the Israeli assault, showing occupation forces repeatedly beating defenseless worshippers, already laying on the ground, who attempted to use plastic chairs to defend against being beaten with batons. Palestinian medical workers were, for hours, blocked from attending to the injured, which included elderly men, Palestinian guards, and women. The Red Crescent reported that as many as 450 Palestinians had been either injured, arrested, or both.
Zionists brutally attack worshipers at Al-Aqsa Mosque.
If any country that the West doesn’t like did this in a holy site, we wouldn’t stop hearing about it in western media for days. But since the Zionists are doing it… silence. Hypocrites.pic.twitter.com/KN2dc2THN2
— Hassan Mafi (@thatdayin1992) April 5, 2023
The reason for Israel’s horrifying attack on Palestinian worshippers, at the Holy Site during Ramadan, was to expel worshippers who had chosen to remain inside the Qibli mosque building. The action of preventing worshippers from remaining in the site, which is an arbitrary Israeli government decision, has no other purpose than to infuriate Palestinians and set in stone a change to the historic status quo at the Holy site. Despite the Kingdom of Jordan having legal custodianship over the site, Israel has de-facto declared its sovereignty over the area. The plan is for settlers to have 7am to 11am for entering the site under the armed protection of the occupation forces, then again a time slot between 1pm and 2pm.
Despite Israeli and Western media propagandist attempts to portray the recent attack as a defensive “clash”, for the sake of ensuring security at the site, the opposite is verifiably the case. Not only is Israel an illegal occupying power in East Jerusalem, where the Mosque is located, but it also needed not use such brutal tactics in order to achieve its desired goal of expelling the worshippers. We know this, because the occupation forces had managed to kick out the worshippers everyday since the beginning of Ramadan, without such extreme violence. In addition to this, after already raiding the site in the early hours of the morning, at around 6am they entered again and assaulted a number of older men whilst they were in the act of prayer. Again at 10pm, Israeli forces then stormed the site and attacked worshippers, where there was clearly no reason for this other than to cause insult to Palestinians and the Muslim World.
Israeli forces attack and mass arrest Palestinian worshippers at Al-Aqsa mosque during Ramadan, armed to the teeth by the US-EU-UK, the same countries that lecture about human rights. pic.twitter.com/3ceDgpRXLn
— Going Underground (@GUnderground_TV) April 5, 2023
The brutal assaults on the elderly and women at al-Aqsa Mosque in particular, along with setting fire to the Qibli prayer hall, caused a mass eruption of riots throughout occupied Palestine. As more videos were released onto social media, showing the carnage, more Palestinians took to the streets of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, and even Palestinian citizens of Israel in places like Umm al-Fahm and Nazareth. Palestinian armed groups throughout the West Bank also opened fire on every possible checkpoint and military tower, where Israeli forces were stationed. In addition to this, there were at least 8 projectiles fired from Gaza; that were claimed by small armed factions there. Israel then launched a number of strikes against the northern Gaza Strip, hitting what it claimed was another rocket building facility, without evidence.
The last time when an escalation this large erupted, was following Israel’s similar assaults on worshippers at al-Aqsa Mosque, during Ramadan, in 2021. This led to an 11-day war between the armed groups in Gaza and the Israeli military, after Hamas responded with rocket fire into settlements around occupied Jerusalem. Similar to now, preceding the war, Palestinian citizens of Israel had taken to the streets to confront Israeli forces, as had Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. May’s escalation, in 2021, ended in a strategic defeat that embarrassed the Israeli government. However, the death toll on the Palestinian side fell at around 270, to 13 Israelis, officially. Tel Aviv did hide a number of documented cases where their soldiers were killed and there are estimates that up to 40 Israeli soldiers may have been killed.
If Israel’s assaults on worshippers at the al-Aqsa Mosque compound continue, it is likely that a war will break out between the Israeli army and Gaza’s armed factions. It is also expected that Palestinian groups in Lebanon may participate in the war. The Islamic Republic of Iran also vows to respond to Israeli airstrikes that killed two of their citizens in Syria, which makes the stakes even higher for Tel Aviv. In addition to this, the Secretary General of Lebanese Hezbollah, Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah, has been discussing the idea of bringing together a number of regional armed groups, in order to confront and combat Israeli assaults on al-Aqsa Mosque, which has led to the Israeli military putting all its defense systems on high-alert.
Photos showing the brutal assault by the lsraeli occupation forces on the Palestinian worshipers in Al-Aqsa last night. pic.twitter.com/B1lihd3z83
— TIMES OF GAZA (@Timesofgaza) April 5, 2023
