The situation is again tense on the esplanade of the Mosques, in Jerusalem, on this April 22, third Friday of the holy month of Ramadan, which coincides with the end of the celebrations of Passover, the Jewish Passover.

New clashes between Israeli police and Palestinian demonstrators broke out, noted an AFP photographer on the spot.

Early in the morning, the Israeli police forces entered the esplanade, the third holiest site in Islam, and young Palestinians threw stones in their direction, noted this journalist who reported some injuries.

According to Israeli police, at around 4 a.m., Palestinian "masked rioters carrying Hamas flags" threw stones at the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest prayer site, located below the Esplanade of the Mosques, in the Old City of Jerusalem.

The Palestinian Red Crescent has reported at least 27 injured, two seriously, in a first assessment of these clashes.

More than 200 injured in one week

Over the past week, more than 200 people, mostly Palestinians, have been injured in clashes in and around the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in East Jerusalem, the occupied and annexed Palestinian sector of the Holy City. by Israel. 

This new escalation of tensions has led to rocket fire by Palestinian armed groups from the Gaza Strip towards Israel and Israeli strikes in retaliation on this Palestinian enclave of 2.3 million inhabitants.

The presence during Ramadan of many Jews - who can visit the place under certain conditions and at specific times without praying there, according to the status quo in force - and the deployment of police forces on the spot were widely perceived by Palestinians and several countries in the region as a gesture of "provocation".

The threat of a new military escalation

Several Arab ministers gathered in Amman, Jordan, thus condemned "the Israeli attacks and violations against the faithful of the Al-Aqsa mosque", a site administered by Jordan, but access to which is controlled by the Jewish state.

"Israel preserves and will continue to preserve the status quo on the Temple Mount" but "under no circumstances will we accept rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip," Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said Thursday. .

He had just met the US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, Yaël Lempert, and the emissary in charge of Israeli-Palestinian relations, Hady Amr. 

The two American officials then spoke with the leaders of the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas, which sits in the occupied West Bank.

"The president (Abbas) has asked for the urgent intervention of the American administration in order to put an end once and for all to the Israeli escalation in the Palestinian Territories", declared after the meeting Hussein al-Sheikh, a tenor of the Palestinian Authority.

With AFP

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