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Third Expansion of Grand Mosque Launched by King Abdullah, Completed by King Salman

King Salman bin Abdulaziz is briefed on the expansion project in May 2015. (SPA)
King Salman bin Abdulaziz is briefed on the expansion project in May 2015. (SPA)
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Third Expansion of Grand Mosque Launched by King Abdullah, Completed by King Salman

King Salman bin Abdulaziz is briefed on the expansion project in May 2015. (SPA)
King Salman bin Abdulaziz is briefed on the expansion project in May 2015. (SPA)

The third expansion of the Grand Mosque in the holy city of Makkah was its largest in history. Throughout the centuries, the expansions would focus on raising the capacity of worshippers. The central Mataf area has maintained its size over the years given the limited space available to expand it, so focus would often turn to the surrounding structures.

In 2005, King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz ordered that a study be made over expanding the capacity at the Grand Mosque to receive more worshippers and Hajj and Umrah pilgrims.

The expansion was implemented with the addition of four floors to the al-Masaa area to accommodate 120,000 people per hour. The Mataf area was expanded to accommodate 105,000 people per hour. The northern building of the Grand Mosque was expanded to accommodate more worshippers and the number of columns throughout was reduced to make more space for people and combat crowding.

Foundation

In August 2011, King Abdullah laid the foundation for the greatest expansion in the Grand Mosque’s history. The expansion was not only the most expensive and most expansive in terms of accommodating more worshippers, but the most advanced architecturally and technically and on the health, security and sustainable levels.

The King Abdullah expansion project included expanding the main building of the Grand Mosque, the Masaa and Mataf areas and outer courtyards, increasing the number of bridges and constructing central services and security buildings. It also called for the construction of a central hospital and pedestrian tunnels, transportation stations and bridges that lead to the Grand Mosques. Infrastructure improvements related to electricity, water storage, sanitation and others, were also introduced.

The project utilized the best advanced systems available in saving energy, as well as lighting and sound systems, air conditioning, fire alarms and surveillance cameras. Five power generation stations were built, and the best ventilation systems were put in place.

The King Abdullah zamzam project was inaugurated in 2010 to raise the bottling of the holy water to 200,000 bottles per day.

At its conclusion, the third Saudi expansion of the Grand Mosque increased its area to 750,000 square meters to accommodate over 2.5 million worshippers at a cost of 300 billion riyals (80 billion dollars).

Behind the scenes

A royal decree was issued to the Ministry of Education to form a technical team of various specializations to come up with the architectural design and technical aspects of the expansion. Local and international firms and Saudi universities were invited to submit their proposals.

The best proposal was submitted by the King Saud University. Staff and students came up with the plan after 40 days of tireless work.

Dean of the College of Architecture and Planning and head of the design team Dr. Abdulaziz al-Muqrin recalled that the proposal competed against 14 presentations that were submitted by local and international firms and other faculties.

A royal decree chose the King Saud University proposal to serve as the foundation of the expansion project, which would be developed further with more experts.

Dr. al-Muqrin spoke with pride of the hard work put in by his team of 24 colleagues and students in coming up with the design between 2008 and 2009. The university was tasked with developing the design and a university team, headed by Dr. Al-Muqrin, joined experts, selected by the Ministry of Higher Education, to carry out their work.

King Salman era

The third expansion continued after Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz’s ascension to the throne in January 2015. He vowed that the Kingdom will remain committed to its responsibilities in serving the two holy mosques, following in the footsteps of the kings and rulers who preceded him.

On May 30, 2015, he inspected the expansion and ordered that all means be dedicated to ensure it is complete. On July 11, 2015, he inaugurated a number of main projects within the expansion, including the expansion of the main building, courtyards project, pedestrian tunnels and main services hub.

King Salman also launched the Pilgrim Experience Program, one of the main programs of the Kingdom’s Vision 2030, that aims to introduce a qualitative shift in services to pilgrims so that they can perform the holy rituals smoothly and with ease. The program focuses on easing their arrival to the two holy mosques, offering them quality services and enriching their religious and cultural experience.

On June 1, 2018, King Salman issued a royal decree to form the Royal Commission for Makkah City and Holy Sites, which is now chaired by Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Crown Prince and Prime Minister. The Commission aims to elevate the services provided to the pilgrims to achieve prosperity and sustainable development goals that align with Makkah’s holy standing.

COVID-19 pandemic

History will attest to King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed’s bold decision to the government to combat the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

They decided to suspend the Umrah and close the Mataf and Rawda areas at the Grand Mosque. The mosque itself was closed to visitors and only open to worshippers during hours of prayer to prevent the spread of the disease.

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Israel’s Settler Pressure on West Bank Villages Stirs Annexation Fears 

A Palestinian man sits with his son next to a herd of goats, outside of their tent, near Jericho, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, February 9, 2025. (Reuters)
A Palestinian man sits with his son next to a herd of goats, outside of their tent, near Jericho, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, February 9, 2025. (Reuters)
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Israel’s Settler Pressure on West Bank Villages Stirs Annexation Fears 

A Palestinian man sits with his son next to a herd of goats, outside of their tent, near Jericho, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, February 9, 2025. (Reuters)
A Palestinian man sits with his son next to a herd of goats, outside of their tent, near Jericho, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, February 9, 2025. (Reuters)

Just meters from the last houses in Bardala, a Palestinian village at the northern end of the occupied West Bank, Israel's army has been bulldozing a dirt road and ditch between the community and open grazing land on the hills behind it.

Israel's military told Reuters the works were for security and to allow it to patrol the area following the killing of an Israeli civilian in August near the village by a man from another town. It did not detail what it was building there.

Farmers from the fertile Jordan Valley village fear the army patrols and Israeli settlers moving in will exclude them from pastures that feed around 10,000 sheep and goats, as has happened in other parts of the West Bank, undercutting their livelihoods and eventually driving from the village.

Israeli settler outposts have appeared around the village since last year, with clusters of blue and white Israeli flags newly fluttering from nearby hilltops. The settlers intimidated semi-nomadic Bedouin shepherds to abandon their camps in the area last year, four Bedouin families and Israeli human rights NGOs told Reuters.

The tighter military control in the Jordan Valley and arrival of settler outposts in the area over the past months are new developments in a part of the West Bank that had mostly avoided the build up of Israel's presence on the ground in central areas of the Palestinian territory.

With each advance of Israeli settlements and roads, the territory becomes more fractured, further undermining prospects for a contiguous land on which Palestinians could build a sovereign state. Most countries consider Israel's settlements in the occupied West Bank to be illegal.

Over recent weeks, caravans and shelters have begun appearing on the scrub-covered hills a few hundred meters west of Bardala, on land behind the new track, Reuters reporters saw. Such temporary shelters have been the first signs of new outposts being built.

Reuters was unable to contact any of the new arrivals in the outposts around the village.

Ibrahim Sawafta, a member of the Bardala village council, said two dozen farmers would be prevented from reaching grazing land if soldiers and settler outposts obstruct their free movement. Unable to keep their large flocks in pens within the village itself, they would be forced to sell.

"Bardala would be a small prison," he said, sitting on a bench outside his house in the village.

He said the overall goal was "to restrict people, to force them to leave the Jordan Valley."

In response to Reuters questions, the army said the area behind the dirt road outside Bardala was designated as a live fire zone but included "a passage" manned by Israeli soldiers, suggesting limitations on free movement in the area.

It said the passage would allow for "the continuation of daily life and the fulfilment of residents' needs," without giving further details.

The office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as well as the Yesha Council and the Jordan Valley Council, that represent settlers in the West Bank did not reply to requests for comment for this story.

Sawafta said gunmen had been known to come into the area from towns to the west and the barrier appeared intended to make access more difficult and force traffic through main roads with security checkpoints under Israeli control.

But he said the effect of the move would be to obstruct access to the land, which in some cases was owned by villagers. The activity around Bardala is part of a wider Israeli effort to reshape the West Bank. Over the year and a half since war broke out in Gaza, settlement activity has accelerated in areas seen as the core of a future Palestinian state.

Meanwhile, Israel's pro-settler politicians have been emboldened by the return to the White House of Donald Trump who has already proposed that Palestinians leave Gaza, a suggestion widely condemned across the Middle East and beyond as an attempt to ethnically cleanse Palestinian territories.

In recent weeks, army raids in refugee camps near volatile West Bank cities, including Jenin, Tulkarm and Tubas, near Bardala, have sent tens of thousands of people fleeing their homes, fueling fears of permanent displacement. The raids come amid a renewed push to formally absorb the West Bank as part of Israel, a proposal supported by some of US President Donald Trump's aides. Israel's military has occupied the West Bank since the 1967 Middle East war.

CORNFIELDS AND GREENHOUSES

Bardala, with a population of about 3,000, lies a few meters from the pre-1967 line separating the West Bank from Israel. It prospered quietly over the past 30 years as Israel's settlement movement swallowed up thousands of hectares of land in other parts of the West Bank.

The cornfields and clusters of plastic-sheeted greenhouses where its farmers grow aubergines, peppers and zucchini for the markets of the West Bank and Israel underscore how fertile the land is in the narrow strip of valley alongside the Jordan River, running from the Dead Sea north towards the Sea of Galilee.

But the new Israeli-controlled path will squeeze the village against Highway 90, a road that runs north-south along the riverine border with Jordan from the Dead Sea. Highway 90 ends at the separating line between the West Bank and Israel, just outside the village. The separating line is marked by a high fence.

Citing the experience of other villages, Dror Etkes, founder of Israeli rights group Kerem Navot, said the new track and settlement activity would block access for Palestinians to the area north of Bardala, "all the way up to the separation barrier." Kerem Navot tracks Israeli settlement and land management policy in the West Bank.

The authorities "will take a few thousand dunhams, mainly of agricultural land and prevent the Palestinians from cultivating this land," he said. A dunham is a tenth of a hectare.

ANNEXATION FEARS

The West Bank, so named because of its relation to the river that separates it from Jordan, has long been seen by religious nationalist hardliners in Israel as part of a Greater Israel through historical and Biblical connections to the Jewish people. Jewish settlement building has roared ahead under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and allies in government such as hardline Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, himself a settler, who said last year he would push to gain Washington's support for annexation in 2025.

Israel's Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said at the time that the government's position on annexation had not yet been settled. Israel's opposition to ceding control of the West Bank has been deepened by its fears of a repeat of the October 7, 2023 attack near Gaza. Since the start of the war in Gaza, 43 new outposts, the seeds of future settlements, have been built in the West Bank, according to Peace Now, an Israeli organization that tracks settlement building.

Most are farm outposts that exclude Palestinians from agricultural land. At least seven were built in the Jordan Valley, according to Palestinian Authority figures. As in other areas of the West Bank, Palestinians and rights groups say the arrival of outposts coincided with more violence from bands of settlers, now free of the fear of US sanctions since Trump cancelled penalties imposed under former President Joe Biden for previous violence.

For months, Bedouins living in semi-permanent stockades in the hills grazing sheep and goats around the Jordan Valley have been subjected to harassment by violent groups of settlers. In late January, the local school in Bardala itself was attacked, after the settlers said stones had been thrown at them.

"The settlers would attack us every Saturday, not allowing us to leave the house at all," said Mahmoud Kaabneh, who left his home in Um Aljmal, an area in the hills some 20 km south of Bardala for Tubas, along with a dozen other families after repeated incursions by threatening bands of settlers. The creation in 2023 of the Settlements Administration, a civil department for the West Bank answerable to Smotrich, has fueled Palestinian concern that the move from military occupation to annexation is already happening by stealth.

In his first term, Trump overturned decades of US policy by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital. But he has not so far given US approval to the calls for full annexation.

Extending Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank would end already slim hopes of creating an independent Palestine alongside Israel.

But Trump's talk of redeveloping Gaza as a US-controlled waterfront resort, along with his aides' ties to the settler movement, has alarmed Palestinians, still haunted by the "Nakba," or catastrophe, in the 1948 war at the start of the state of Israel, when some 750,000 Palestinians fled or were forced out of their homes and never returned.

For Sawafta, from the Bardala village council, developments like the one in his home village point to an effort to dispossess Palestinians in the way their parents and grandparents were dispossessed before.

"Israel effectively and practically confiscates the land," he said.