The attack on Jerusalem intensifies, extends and expands

Every morning, the people of Jerusalem wake up to new calamities. Hardly a day goes by without being targeted. The schools of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) were stormed by the occupation army, which hung closure orders on their gates, displacing its 800 students and preventing them from completing their academic year. This has social, educational and economic repercussions on the students of these schools, and leaves the fate of their academic year in jeopardy. The academic year is coming to an end, and transferring them from their schools to other schools is not an easy or simple matter, as there are differences in the curriculum and opportunities for their absorption at the end of the academic year, under the multiple educational umbrellas in Jerusalem, where the difference in their reference and curriculum seems minimal.

The attack on UNRWA schools was preceded by another attack on students of higher education institutions, Palestinian universities. The occupation municipality and its department of education issued a decision prohibiting any Jerusalemite student who graduated from Palestinian universities, such as Al-Quds University, Birzeit University, Bethlehem University, An-Najah University, Hebron University, American University - Jenin, and Ahliya University - Bethlehem and Hebron, from joining the government education system in Jerusalem schools. The decision stipulated that they must obtain a university degree from an Israeli educational institution. This is an attempt to empty Palestinian universities of their Jerusalemite students and the Arabs of the 1948 Palestinian territories, under the pretext that these universities have educational and pedagogical content that incites "terrorism," hatred, and malice. What is meant here is the war on awareness, identity, culture, narrative, geography, and history.

This was preceded by a series of raids targeting Jerusalemite institutions, including libraries. Three libraries were raided—one on Salah al-Din Street in Jerusalem twice, and two others in the Old City of Jerusalem—under the pretext of purchasing and selling provocative books related to nationalist concepts and themes.

As part of the war on Jerusalemite institutions, which the occupation aims to weaken civil society and prevent these institutions from providing their services to it and to marginalized groups of children, women, and others, the occupation intelligence raided and summoned a number of members of the Jerusalem Chamber of Commerce and Industry for investigation and confiscated a group of their documents and papers. After that, the headquarters of the Jerusalem Endowment in the city was raided, and some of its employees were summoned for investigation. Then, a decision was issued to prevent it from working in the city and outside it. The pretexts and excuses were that it works for the Palestinian Authority in Jerusalem and violates what is known as the 1994 Middle East Agreement, which prevents the Palestinian Authority from working in Jerusalem.

Let's not forget that the war on the Palestinian demographic presence in the city has escalated in an unprecedented manner. During the first quarter of this year, more than 100 homes, commercial, economic and agricultural facilities were demolished in the city of Jerusalem. On Friday, May 9, 2025, the residents of the Al-Waad building in the Wadi Qaddum area of Silwan, which the occupation and its municipality sought to demolish in 2022, were handed over. However, a series of popular and community activities and events, as well as political and diplomatic movements, made the occupation municipality back down from this decision. The building threatened with demolition includes 12 apartments and is inhabited by more than 85 citizens, most of whom are children and women.

As for the Judaization of Al-Aqsa, the onslaught is escalating and increasing in intensity at an unprecedented pace. There is systematic incitement by the rabbis of the so-called Temple Mount Trustees and extremist ministers such as Ben-Gvir, Smotrich, Amichai Eliyahu, and others. Even the pro-Zionist US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, has said that efforts must be made to establish what is known as the Third Temple in the heart of Al-Aqsa. We also witnessed the settlement associations and the occupation municipality carrying out extensive excavations in the “Hosh al-Shihabi” area, the “Ribat al-Kurd,” located near Bab al-Hadid, in the western part of Al-Aqsa Mosque. This is the area where these extremist groups seek to establish a Jewish synagogue, which they know according to their Talmudic and Torah concepts as the “Little Wailing Wall,” in order to expand the “Buraq Wall” plaza to accommodate the largest number of Jewish worshippers, and to facilitate sovereignty and control over Al-Aqsa. This Ribat al-Kurd was established by the Mamluk Caliph Al-Muqar Sayf al-Kurd, as the Mamluks were interested from 1270 AD until 1517 AD in establishing religious institutions in Jerusalem, including schools, hospices, corners, ribats, and housing for poor pilgrims coming to Al-Aqsa Mosque for the Hajj, who do not have the money to pay the costs of housing.

Let's not forget that some activists and rabbis, such as Arnon Segal, an activist in these Talmudic and Torah associations, Rabbi Yehuda Wolfensohn, and extremist Minister Ben Gvir, have published images of themselves, using artificial intelligence, bringing Passover animal sacrifices into the Al-Aqsa courtyards, as well as images of the demolition of the Dome of the Rock and the erection of what is known as the Third Temple in its place. One occupation soldier even published a photo of the bombing of Al-Aqsa and the erection of the Temple in its place.

In order to prevent any form of sovereignty or presence of the Palestinian Authority and its symbols in the city of Jerusalem, the occupation has been imposing a series of punitive measures since 2018 against the city's governor, Adnan Ghaith, whether through summonses, investigations, repeated arrests, house arrest, restrictions on movement, or preventing entry to the West Bank, not to mention targeting him in his daily affairs. Such punishments, which have affected many national, religious, and community figures and symbols of Jerusalem, have extended to include the Minister of Jerusalem Affairs, Ashraf al-Awar, whom the occupation prevented from entering the West Bank, and consequently from reaching the ministry's headquarters in al-Ram, for a period of six months. A six-month ban, according to the occupation, has no ceiling and may extend to several years. There is the national leader, Abdul Latif Ghaith, whose ban from entering the West Bank and from reaching his workplace at the Addameer Prisoner Care and Support Foundation has reached eleven years and counting.

We must not lose sight of the demographic war, ethnic cleansing, expulsion and displacement that the occupation seeks to wage, to overturn the demographic reality in the city in favor of the settlers, by expanding the area of Jerusalem to 73 km2, where the settlements southwest of Jerusalem are being annexed to it, "Gush Etzion" and the "Efrat settlement bloc" and the settlements of the city of Jerusalem, reaching the settlements southeast of Jerusalem, the "Ma'ale Adumim" settlement bloc.

The process of isolating Jerusalem from its Palestinian surroundings, geographically and demographically, and establishing settlement outposts in the heart of Jerusalem's neighborhoods and towns, is intended to obliterate and prevent any political solution based on the two-state solution, to prevent the re-division of the city, and to transform Jerusalem's neighborhoods into scattered islands within a vast Israeli environment.

It is a war on the city and on all manifestations of the holy presence in it, above ground, underground, and even in the air.

Jerusalem has received nothing but slogans and statements of support from official Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim authorities, without any concrete action on the ground. The assault on Jerusalem is expected to escalate dramatically, given the evolving situation and preoccupations with the ongoing war of siege, starvation, expulsion, displacement, and killing in the Gaza Strip, as well as the "geographical and demographic engineering" taking place in the northern West Bank.