Warnings continued by Palestinian officials and forces against allowing settlement groups to storm Al-Aqsa Mosque on Thursday and raise the Israeli flag on the anniversary of what Tel Aviv calls "Independence Day", which the Palestinians considered a new escalation in the wake of a month full of confrontations.
The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) said today, Wednesday, in a statement that "the occupation's allowing settlers to storm Al-Aqsa tomorrow played with fire and dragged the area into an escalation for which the occupation bears responsibility."
The movement renewed its call on the masses of the Palestinian people to gather in Al-Aqsa and to mobilize in Jerusalem "in defense of our identity, our religion and our first kiss."
For its part, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry called on the UN Security Council to assume its responsibilities in stopping the Israeli escalation against the Palestinians and their sanctities. Palestinian officials also denounced the threat of settlers' groups to raise the Israeli flag at Al-Aqsa Mosque.
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry said in a statement issued yesterday evening, Tuesday, that the Security Council should take "the necessary measures to pressure the Israeli government, to stop its aggression and escalation against the Palestinians, and to force it to abide by international law."
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry condemned the actions of the Israeli occupation army and settlers throughout the occupied Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem, especially the calls of the settler groups to storm Al-Aqsa and raise the Israeli flag inside it and perform Talmudic prayers in its courtyards.
The Israeli army also condemned the bulldozing of large areas of Palestinian land, the uprooting of hundreds of olive trees and the attack on shepherds, as happened in the Masafer Yatta area and the villages of Duma and Kafr Malik, and the initiation of building a synagogue in Wadi al-Rababa in the town of Silwan, south of Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.
And she considered that "these violations and attacks reflect an official Israeli insistence to continue to escalate the situation and to persevere in implementing its plans to perpetuate the occupation, deepen the structures of the apartheid system, and escalate the targeting of Al-Aqsa Mosque in order to establish its temporal division on the path of dividing it spatially."
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry held the Israeli government headed by Naftali Bennett fully responsible for the repercussions of this continued escalation.
On Tuesday, Palestinian officials denounced the settler groups' threat to raise the Israeli flag during the storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque on the anniversary of what they call "Independence Day".
A member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Hussein al-Sheikh, said in a tweet on Twitter, "Raising the Israeli flag and singing the national anthem at Al-Haram Al-Sharif is a flagrant defiance of the feelings of Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims."
He added that "the settlers' threat to this is a continuation of extremist and racist campaigns that seek to perpetuate division in the Haram al-Sharif, and to ignite a national religious war in the region."
For his part, Palestine Chief Justice and Presidential Adviser for Religious Affairs and Islamic Relations Mahmoud al-Habbash said that the settlers' threat is a flagrant attack on the sanctities of Muslims.
He added that the occupation policies "will lead to igniting a religious war in the Holy City, due to attempts to impose new equations on the ground, such as the temporal and spatial division of Al-Aqsa Mosque."
The Palestinian Minister of Awqaf and Religious Affairs, Hatem Al-Bakri, confirmed that what is happening is an "abuse of our sanctities and a blatant attack on them, and a flagrant defiance of the feelings of Muslims in Palestine and the Arab and Islamic worlds."
Al-Bakri called on the international community to put an end to these attacks, which he said are increasing in a systematic and planned manner.
Among those settlement groups, Activists for the Temple said it calls for "celebrating independence on the Temple Mount (in reference to the Al-Aqsa Mosque) and waving the flag and chanting the Israeli anthem."
During the month of Ramadan, Al-Aqsa Mosque witnessed severe tensions, with multiple Israeli incursions into its courtyards, leaving dozens of wounded and Palestinian detainees.
On May 5 of each year, Israel celebrates the anniversary of its founding in 1948, which was the catastrophe of the Palestinian people following the war that led to the displacement of Palestinians and their expulsion by armed Zionist gangs.