Hundreds of Israeli settlers stormed the courtyards of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque today, Thursday, where they carried out provocative tours and performed public Torah rituals. Official sources in Jerusalem Governorate reported that the number of intruders reached 492 settlers, who completed their incursions in two periods, morning and afternoon, under tight guard from the occupation police, who secured their routes inside the Haram al-Sharif.
These escalating movements come in response to calls launched by alleged Temple groups under the name of 'compensatory storming,' coinciding with the Torah 'Feast of Weeks' which falls tomorrow, Friday. According to the Hebrew calendar, settlers seek to intensify their presence today due to their inability to storm the mosque on the actual holiday, which prompted them to turn Al-Aqsa's courtyards into a scene of religious rituals.
The eastern courtyard of Al-Aqsa Mosque witnessed the performance of what is known as 'epic prostration,' which is full prostration on the face, in addition to provocative collective prayers that caused great tension. Local sources explained that these practices are part of attempts to impose a new Judaization reality and the efforts of extremist groups to introduce plant and animal 'sacrifices' into the mosque to consecrate Torah worship there.
In a separate context, the Israeli occupation authorities released the exiled Jerusalemite lawmaker Muhammad Abu Tir, 76 years old, after the end of his administrative detention period. Abu Tir had been held for 6 months under a secret file and without any official charges, a procedure that the occupation authorities have consistently used against Palestinian leaders in occupied Jerusalem.
Lawmaker Muhammad Abu Tir is considered one of the most prominent Jerusalemite figures who have been subjected to systematic persecution, having spent approximately 44 years intermittently in occupation prisons over decades. His suffering with forced deportation began in 2010 when the occupation authorities revoked his Jerusalem identity card and decided to exile him outside his hometown as part of targeting elected representatives.
Human rights reports confirmed that Abu Tir's release highlights the ongoing policy of persecuting Jerusalem's representatives, including Ahmed Attoun, Muhammad Toutah, and former minister Khaled Abu Arafeh. These national figures face fierce campaigns that include repeated arrests and revocation of residency permits, with the aim of emptying the holy city of its influential leaders and silencing their voices from the political and social arena.
Concurrently, Jerusalemite prisoner John William Qaqish breathed freedom after serving a long sentence of 11 years in occupation detention centers. Qaqish was arrested in 2015 after being accused of carrying out a stabbing attack targeting a settler in the alleys of the Old City of occupied Jerusalem, where he was transferred between several Israeli detention centers under harsh conditions during his years in prison.
These successive events in the city of Jerusalem embody a bitter reality experienced by Jerusalemites between the hammer of daily incursions and violations of holy sites, and the anvil of arrests and forced displacement. The issue of prisoners and Jerusalem remains the main axis in the ongoing confrontation with the occupation, amidst the Palestinians' insistence on steadfastness and defending their national and religious identity in the face of Judaization schemes.
The Feast of Weeks is one of the occasions that extremist groups seek to exploit to establish a new Judaization reality inside Al-Aqsa Mosque.
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Hundreds of settlers storm Al-Aqsa, and the occupation releases leader Muhammad Abu Tir