Thousands of Jewish settlers entered the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque through the Moroccan Gate on Thursday and performed religious rituals throughout the compound, including in areas that had been barred to them and reserved exclusively for Muslims during Israel’s 59-year occupation.
Under heavy Israeli police protection and led by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, they raised Israeli flags and sang Israel’s national anthem, near the main mosque and the Dome of the Rock.
The Islamic Waqf Department in occupied East Jerusalem said unprecedented numbers of settlers, estimated in the thousands, entered Al-Aqsa during the morning and midday. They conducted provocative tours, performed Talmudic rituals, prostrated themselves in prayer, sang, danced and waved Israeli flags, particularly in the compound’s eastern section.
The Waqf said Likud lawmaker Amit Halevi led groups of settlers during the incursions. Israeli police also increased the number permitted in each group to around 150, up from a previous limit of 30, in a move aimed at expanding the incursions.
Israeli forces imposed tight restrictions at Al-Aqsa’s gates and the entrances to Jerusalem’s Old City, turning the area into a military barracks and deploying officers inside the compound. They prevented some Muslim worshippers from entering, searched others, checked their identification and treated them violently.
The Palestinian Jerusalem Governorate described Ben-Gvir’s entry with his followers as a dangerous escalation and a violation of the site’s historical and legal status quo. It warned that the action was part of attempts to impose new realities inside the mosque and called for international intervention, stressing that the entire Al-Aqsa compound is exclusively a Muslim place of worship.
It said only a limited number of Muslim worshippers were able to perform dawn prayers before Israeli forces beat several of them.
The Palestinian Ministry of Religious Endowments also condemned the incursion, warning that the escalation of visits and rituals was intended to impose a temporal and spatial division of the compound.
So-called Temple groups had intensified mobilization ahead of the anniversary of the temples’ destruction, seeking a new record of more than 5,000 settlers in one day, compared with around 4,000 incursions recorded last year.
The groups circulated schedules and routes and urged supporters to participate, renewing calls to build the purported temple in place of Al-Aqsa Mosque. Although the occasion is traditionally a day of mourning, organizers acted with arrogance and violence by denying Palestinian and Muslim rights.
Palestinian groups called on worshippers to gather and maintain a presence at Al-Aqsa. The mosque’s preacher, Sheikh Ekrima Sabri, warned that Israeli authorities were exploiting Jewish religious occasions to expand incursions and alter the status quo under political cover from ministers and Knesset members.
Israel had previously permitted Jews to visit Al-Aqsa in limited numbers without provocation, prayer or visible religious signs. Some Jewish religious circles opposed the visits, regarding them as an affront to Jews and Judaism. Religious Zionists led by Ben-Gvir, however, consider entering Al-Aqsa an inherent religious right and commonly pray for the rebuilding of the Jewish temple they claim once stood where the Dome of the Rock now stands.
