Occupied Jerusalem

- Hours after assuming the position of Minister of National Security in the new Israeli government coalition, extremist Itamar Ben Gvir announced his intention to storm Al-Aqsa Mosque this week, avoiding specifying the exact date for that.

However, Hebrew media suggested that this violation would be carried out on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Also, on the first day of his assumption of office, the attorney for the "new Sanhedrin" council (the central rabbinical institution of the extremist Temple settler groups), Aviad Fisoli, sent a letter to the Israeli police commissioner in Jerusalem asking for clarification of the official policy that Ben Gvir would follow here.

The lawyer also requested a direct hearing session with the minister to inform him of the demands of extremist groups, and to determine the position of the government and the police on them.

The letter included 11 demands of the extremist Temple groups (planning to build a structure on the ruins of Al-Aqsa Mosque), which are:

  • Extending the hours of the extremists storming Al-Aqsa Mosque.

  • Allowing the storming settlers to perform all the prayers and biblical rituals in Al-Aqsa Mosque.

  • Opening the door to raids throughout the week, and not closing the mosque in the face of extremists on Fridays and Saturdays.

  • Allowing the entry of what they call "sacred tools" into Al-Aqsa Mosque, including the prayer robe, hat, Torah scrolls, the Ark of the Covenant, trumpets, and plant and animal offerings.

  • Locating a Jewish synagogue inside Al-Aqsa Mosque.

  • Ending the Israeli police escorting extremists during their storming tours.

  • Allowing the mosque to be stormed from all doors, and not confining it to the Mughrabi Gate, which has been controlled by the occupation authorities since the occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967.

  • Not closing Al-Aqsa Mosque to intruders during Islamic events.

  • Declaration of "equal right" for all religions at Al-Aqsa.

  • Cancellation of the policy of deportation from Al-Aqsa against Jews.

  • The door of the synagogue, which is located in the historical Tanziah school overlooking the Al-Aqsa squares, and is currently under the control of the Israeli Ministry of Security, was opened to all Jews.

Settlement groups called on Ben Gvir to open the way for permanent incursions and allocate a site for a Jewish synagogue in Al-Aqsa (agencies)

agenda for the coming period

Attorney Aviad Fisoli's letter also states that the Minister of National Security will exclusively determine police policy and general guidelines for it in Al-Aqsa Mosque.

And that no other official is allowed to direct the police in this place, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is known for his hostility to Jews who climb the Temple Mount.

Thus, Ziyad Abhis, a researcher on Jerusalem affairs, says, the "Temple" groups have set their agenda for the coming period in the hands of their minister who received the national security portfolio, and have declared again, through the legal advisor of their central rabbinical institution, their three agendas in Al-Aqsa, which are:

  • Complete temporal division

  • And the spatial division by allocating a synagogue inside Al-Aqsa

  • and the moral establishment of the temple by performing the full biblical rituals in it and introducing all the biblical "holy tools" into it.

Abhis commented on the coincidence of this message with Ben Gvir's announcement of his intention to storm Al-Aqsa and on the first day of the new Israeli government's start-up of its work led by Netanyahu, by saying that "2023 is the year of the battle for Al-Aqsa since its first day, and this Zionist religious right came to liquidate the Palestinian issue from the Al-Aqsa gate." And Jerusalem.”

Thus, "our duty is to keep Al-Aqsa Mosque in mind and direct all energies to its battle, otherwise we do not deserve it."

Inauguration of the era of "religious Zionism"

In turn, Al-Quds International Foundation considered Ben Gvir's declaration of his intention to storm Al-Aqsa as a challenge intended to inaugurate what it called "the era of religious Zionism" in Al-Aqsa, and called for confronting it and intensifying the bond in the blessed mosque.

In a statement, the Foundation said that Ben Gvir's declaration, which came on the same day that he received a letter from the extremist "Temple groups", including 11 demands against Al-Aqsa, including the allocation of a synagogue inside it, allowing all biblical rituals and the so-called sacred tools, and extending the hours of storming, confirms the complementarity of roles. Between the minister and these groups to which he belongs organically, and which formed his electoral base that campaigned him to win the elections.

The Foundation warned that Bin Ghafir’s storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque this time differs from any previous storming of it, as it is, as it said, “a declaration of sovereignty and domination over Al-Aqsa, and a message that a new era has opened in which religious Zionism controls the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, to unleash the hand of its extremists in it in temporal and spatial division.” And the performance of biblical rituals in it, on the path of religious substitution through which it aspires to remove Al-Aqsa Mosque from existence.”

And she stressed that the Al-Aqsa Mosque is "an Islamic mosque with a pure divine will, and with a unique civilized experience over the course of 14 centuries of the time of Islamic rule for it, and neither Ibn Ghafir nor Sharon before him, nor any person on the face of the earth, has the right to alter this established fact."

The institution's statement called on Jerusalemites and the Palestinians of 48 to flock to Al-Aqsa Mosque and its Rabat on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, to confront the intrusion of Ben Gvir and the extremists of the "religious Zionist" parties and the security services at their disposal.

And that is from the dawn prayer until the afternoon, which are the times designated for the incursions.

It also called on "the popularly active forces of the nation to stand by mass movements on the side of those stationed in the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, so that the fields of the Arab and Islamic world would be squares of support for Al-Aqsa, joining those stationed in its arena," according to its statement.

As well as the announcement of the first Friday of this year on the sixth of January, the Friday of "the bond on the right in the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque" and in the various mosques of the Islamic world, and that "directs the nation's awareness towards the Al-Aqsa battle, which the occupier embarks on from the first day of the year 2023."

Ben Ghafir previously stormed Al-Aqsa several times during the year 2022, but his next storming carries dangerous implications, according to observers (websites)

Exceptional preparation

Meanwhile, the extremist minister, Ben Gvir, wrote in a tweet he posted on his Twitter page, on Sunday evening, "I thank all the media for their interest in the issue of ascending the Temple Mount. I am announcing this, and until then, I would like the channels to address in their daily evening news the question of when I intend to climb the Temple Mount.”

This is not the first storming of Bin Ghafir and it will not be the last in the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque, but it is expected that the occupation police, who are now receiving orders from it, will prepare to exceptionally secure its imminent storming, for fear of "obstructing the storming and causing disturbances," according to the Israeli Channel Seven website.

It is noteworthy that this extremist minister carried out several incursions into the first two kisses during the past 2022 as a member of the Israeli Knesset, and during his provocative tours he incited against the Palestinian factions and the Islamic endowments, saying, "The time has come to expel the Jordanian endowments from the Temple Mount," and on the third day of the Jewish Parachute Festival (the Throne). "We are the owners of this place and we should own it," he said during his break-in.