On Monday morning, Al-Aqsa Mosque witnessed a large-scale incursion by hundreds of Israeli settlers under heavy protection from Israeli occupation forces. The storming coincided with the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, marking a blatant violation of the sanctity of the holy site and of Muslims’ right to practice their religious rituals freely.
According to the Islamic Waqf Department in Jerusalem, over 800 settlers entered the mosque’s courtyards in successive groups through the Moroccan Gate — controlled by the Israeli authorities since the occupation of the city in 1967. The incursions took place amid a heavy security presence and widespread deployment of occupation forces within the sacred compound.
These provocations are part of a systematic policy targeting Al-Aqsa Mosque, as part of a broader Judaization scheme aiming to alter the historical and legal status quo of the site, erase its Islamic identity, and impose a new reality by force — in flagrant violation of international law, which prohibits altering the character of occupied territory.
Eyewitnesses reported that occupation police closed parts of the mosque to Muslim worshippers to secure the settlers’ movements — a move that represents blatant religious discrimination and a direct assault on the freedom of worship, a right guaranteed by all international human rights conventions.
The repeated incursions into Al-Aqsa Mosque, particularly during Jewish religious holidays, are being used as a tool to gradually assert control over the holy site and to impose a temporal and spatial division — in clear breach of international consensus, which recognises the mosque as a purely Islamic endowment.
Since 2003, Israeli police have unilaterally permitted settlers to storm the mosque while simultaneously restricting the religious freedoms of Muslims. This is a grave violation of the principle of safeguarding holy sites under occupation and undermines Israel’s obligations as an occupying power, which is legally bound to protect — not alter — the religious status quo.
These latest incursions coincide with a wider campaign of escalated violations by Israeli forces and settlers across the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem. So far, this campaign has led to the killing of 972 Palestinians, the injury of around 7,000 others, and the arrest of over 17,000 individuals — part of a sweeping repressive policy designed to crush Palestinian resistance and entrench occupation control.
Palestinians continue to assert their legitimate right to East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state, based on international legal resolutions that recognise the city as occupied territory since 1967 and reject Israel’s unilateral annexation declared in 1980 — a move that has never been internationally recognised.
This ongoing escalation against Jerusalem and its Islamic holy sites comes amid a broader campaign of genocide being carried out by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip since 7 October 2023. This war has resulted in more than 178,000 Palestinians killed or wounded, most of them women and children, in addition to over 11,000 missing — all within the context of a comprehensive campaign aiming to erase the Palestinian presence geographically, demographically, and culturally.
The repeated assaults on Al-Aqsa Mosque, along with the continued atrocities in Gaza and the West Bank, make it clear that what the Palestinian people are enduring is not a “conflict” in the traditional sense, but rather a system of organised oppression and ethnic cleansing. These acts fall squarely under the definition of crimes against humanity and demand immediate and serious action from the international community — not only to stop the violations but also to hold the perpetrators accountable and ensure they do not escape justice.
