This week’s events offered a glimpse of what the coming autumn may hold for Palestinians: Israeli ministers and settlers asserting themselves at Al-Aqsa Mosque; a pardon granted to a soldier convicted of killing a wounded Palestinian; and a tender advanced for a crucial settlement project timed to close just days before Israelis vote on October 27. As Israeli politicians stake out expansionist and even messianic ambitions during Judaism’s holiest days, attacks, demolitions and closures have continued across the occupied territories — with the consequences likely to extend well beyond the changing of the seasons.
Occupied East Jerusalem: A holy day consumed by campaigning and closures
On the eve of Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu toured a network of excavation tunnels running beneath Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and the Old City, before joining thousands of settlers for prayers at the Western Wall behind bulletproof glass. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir stormed the mosque compound itself the following morning under heavy police protection; roughly 570 settlers entered to perform religious rituals in violation of the site’s status quo, with more than 450 storming the compound the morning after, according to the news agency Wafa. Jordan’s Foreign Ministry, which holds custodianship over the site, condemned the incursions as an attempt “to impose a temporal and spatial division” of the compound.
Source: www.aljazeera.com
