6 landmarks that the occupation forcibly removed from Al-Aqsa Mosque.. Get to know them

Occupied Jerusalem -

Since the occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967, the Israeli occupation has used the policy of slowly nibbling at the landmarks of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque.

By controlling the landmarks, the occupation seeks to strengthen its administrative, religious and security position, undermine the powers of the Jordanian Islamic Endowment Department, and even expropriate them completely.

The researcher in the affairs of Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque, Radwan Amro, details for Al-Jazeera Net the most prominent features of Al-Aqsa Mosque, which were cut off from it by the force of the occupation, and the sensitivity of the locations of these landmarks and the danger of their current uses.

Al-Tankazi school and the holes are shown in its windows, which are used to target worshipers during the confrontations (Al-Jazeera)

catastrophic school

It was built and endowed by Prince Tankaz al-Nasiri in 1328 AD. It is located above 6 of the arches of the western portico of al-Aqsa. It consists of two floors. The first was built to be used as a school characterized by decorations, niches, and beautiful halls, while the second floor was used as an internal housing for students.

At the end of the Mamluk era and in the Ottoman period, the building was the headquarters of the House of Sharia Judiciary. During the period of the Supreme Islamic Council, and with the intensification of the Al-Buraq Revolution and the Jews’ ambitions for the Al-Buraq Wall, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Al-Husseini, resided in the school and closed its external doors and made its only entrance from inside Al-Aqsa Mosque.

In 1969, the occupation army created a security game with the aim of seizing the Tanziz school, as it is located in a vital and sensitive site overlooking the Al-Buraq Wall and overlooking the Al-Aqsa courtyards. It broke into it and looted its ancient carpets, chandeliers and old furniture, and seized the building and expelled the students and teachers.

From the windows of the Tunzizi school, several massacres were committed in Al-Aqsa, as the occupation forces punched holes in the windows overlooking the squares, from which they targeted worshipers with live bullets and tear gas bombs.

The danger of controlling this landmark does not stop at this point, as researcher Amr confirmed that the religious officers in the occupation police transformed the second floor located within the borders of Al-Aqsa into a synagogue in which they openly perform their Biblical prayers and rituals, so that the worshipers in the squares hear their voices, and some rabbis from The Jewish yeshivas located inside the Old City go to pray in this school as well.

The Jumblatt and Arslan Pasha retreats, which the Israeli police use as an outpost in the Dome of the Rock (Al-Jazeera)

Jumblatt Retreat and Arslan Pasha Retreat

The two adjacent retreats are located north of the courtyard of the honorable rock and are used by the occupation police as a police station and headquarters for the police officer supervising Al-Aqsa.

The retreat was named Arslan Pasha after its restorer, who bears the same name and was the ruler of Jerusalem, Nablus and Gaza in 1697, and to the west of this seclusion is the Jumblatt Retreat, which was built in 1602 by the architect Abdel Mohsen Namir, and built at the expense of Ibn Jumblatt, the leader of the Kurdish Brigade, who wanted to make the Kurds Retreat in Al-Aqsa shelters them when visiting Jerusalem.

At the level of the courtyard of the rock, there is the office of the commander of the occupation police in Al-Aqsa, and in the basement there is a store for the suppression equipment used by the occupation police in Al-Aqsa.

In the two retreats, the occupation police also hold their meetings in a hall designated for this, in addition to a break room.

In the middle of the station is the room of the chief guards of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque and the office of affairs, meaning that it is located between the guards and their chief, and according to Amr, a lot of interference in the affairs of these employees was recorded.

The first police station was established in these two retreats during the British Mandate era, when an attempt to arrest a number of young men in Al-Aqsa failed, so the police station was established with the aim of thwarting the great Palestinian revolution. The two retreats were used as police headquarters.

The police tried to expand and make the most of the building. On the other hand, the Al-Mourabitoun targeted this headquarters repeatedly by burning it, but the police responded by restoring it with the help of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

Al-Mughrabi Gate from inside Al-Aqsa Mosque and two policemen of the occupation appear in front of it (Al-Jazeera)

Moroccan Gate

It was built after the Al-Salahi conquest to be used by the Moroccans who live next to it to enter the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and it was rebuilt during the Mamluk period.

The occupation has seized the keys to this door since the occupation of the city in 1967, and is using it for extremists’ intrusions into the mosque and to bring in tourists, in addition to storming hundreds of members of the occupation forces to suppress worshipers.

Al-Maqdisi researcher stressed that the loss of the keys to this door created a loophole in controlling the inside and outside of Al-Aqsa with the influx of religious and military incursions into the mosque, and in light of plans to expand the door and the bridge leading to it to introduce mechanisms and equipment that help the occupation take a practical step in the projects of partition and construction and the method of repression and control.

The eastern wall of Al-Aqsa Mosque from the side of the Bab Al-Rahma cemetery, showing a sign indicating the tomb of the companion Ubadah bin Al-Samit (Al-Jazeera)

The walls of Al-Aqsa Mosque from the outside, including landmarks and closed doors

The walls take the rule of Al-Aqsa from a legal and historical point of view. The scholars unanimously agreed - according to Radwan Amr - that the wall of the mosque is part of it and takes its rule, and therefore the Al-Buraq Wall belongs to Al-Aqsa and its restoration and sovereignty is a matter related to who manages the affairs of the mosque and not to any other party.

In the first moments of the occupation, the Muslims lost the western wall of Al-Aqsa, which extends between the Mughrabi Gate in the south and the Al-Tanziz School in the north, then the small Al-Buraq wall extending from Bab Al-Hadid to Bab Al-Majlis in the north, and then the southern wall along its length, which Muslims enter after paying a ticket for the Davidson Judaization Center that runs the palaces area Umayyad.

At these walls, the occupation erects scaffolds to carry out restoration operations, organize light shows, and conduct excavations without accountability.

Although the Bab al-Rahma cemetery protected the eastern wall of Al-Aqsa, the ambitions of the occupation escalate in this area, and the Islamic Endowment Department is subjected to severe harassment, to the point of preventing the restoration of this wall, although parts of it are prone to collapse, especially at the graves of the Companions at the entrance to the cemetery.

An image showing the western corridor, whose roof is controlled by the occupation (Al-Jazeera)

The roof of the northern and western arcades

To tighten control over them, the occupation authorities set up an electronic fence to monitor any movement over the corridors, and the police prevented worshipers, guards and neighboring residents from going up to them.

On top of these two corridors, the occupation installed advanced surveillance cameras along the northern corridor from Bab Al-Asbat to Bab Al-Ghanimeh and along the western corridor from Bab Al-Ghawanima to Al-Mughrabi Gate, to monitor what is happening in Al-Aqsa around the clock.

During the confrontations and massacres that took place in the courtyards of the mosque, the sniper unit rose to the roof of these two halls, and a number of worshipers rose with their bullets.

Al-Quds scholar Radwan Amr confirmed that the most dangerous thing about monitoring Al-Aqsa Mosque and suppressing the worshipers from the roof of these two porticos is planning to erect a synagogue over the western portico by deducting the space between the Al-Silsila and Al-Mughrabi doors to create a two-story synagogue. The length of the corridor is to be devoted to men's prayer, which is not a new scheme.