Last week, the Israeli prime minister’s office said Muslim worshipers would be allowed into the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Jerusalem:
The Israeli police force said it would deploy thousands of police officers to the Old City of Jerusalem to hold the first Friday prayers of Ramadan at the Al-Aqsa Mosque due to tensions over the Gaza war.
“We are ready with more police officers for Friday prayers. There will be thousands of people in the Temple Mount area,” police spokesperson Mirit ben Mayor told reporters. She used is the Jewish name for the ruins of Al-Aqsa Mosque.
She said hundreds of police officers had been deployed in the Israeli-annexed Old City of east Jerusalem since the start of Ramadan on Monday.
Bin Mayor said that as many as 25,000 worshipers had gone to the mosque to pray during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan without any incidents.
“We will do everything we can to keep Ramadan quiet,” she told a news conference.
“We are on high alert,” government spokesman Tal Heinrich said when asked about reported clashes between police and worshipers on Sunday.
“It’s no secret that extremist, terrorist groups like Hamas and (Palestinian) Islamic Jihad are trying to incite the region,” she told a news conference.
Last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Muslim worshipers would be allowed into the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the first week of Ramadan in the same numbers as in previous years.
“The security and safety situation will be assessed weekly and decisions will be made accordingly,” the statement said.
Palestinians traveling to Al-Aqsa from the occupied West Bank are expected to face some restrictions, police said in a statement.
Government spokesman Ofir Gendelman said only men over 55 and women over 50 could enter the mosque compound “for security reasons”.
Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir recently called for tighter restrictions on Palestinian residents of the West Bank, saying they “should not be allowed” to enter Jerusalem to pray during Ramadan.
Although management of Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third holiest site, technically belongs to Jordanian authorities, Israel has imposed restrictions in and around the complex.
Clashes often break out at the site between Muslim worshipers and Israeli security forces.
As Ramadan approaches this year, Israel is engaged in a devastating war with the Palestinian Hamas group in the Gaza Strip.
The war broke out after Hamas launched an attack on Israel on October 7 that killed about 1,160 people, mostly civilians, according to AFP statistics based on official Israeli data.
Since then, Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 31,184 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the region’s health ministry.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
