Why does Hamas insist on stopping targeting Al-Aqsa to achieve a truce?

Extremist right-wing minister Ben Gvir (left) in a previous storming of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied Jerusalem (French)

In the response of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) to a proposal for a framework agreement to reach a complete and sustainable truce in three stages, the movement included among its demands: an end to the aggression and settlers’ storming of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the return of conditions there to what they were before 2002.

Returning to the process of forcibly transferring the authority to enter Al-Aqsa for non-Muslims from the Islamic Endowments Department in Jerusalem to the Israeli police through the Mughrabi Gate, tourists were buying tickets to visit the mosque from the Endowments Department until the end of September 2000, when former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Since then, the mosque was closed to tourists and settlers, who would infiltrate among them randomly and unorganized and without Israeli police escort until 2003, when extremist Jews began storming Al-Aqsa by judicial decision.

"Red line"

Since that time, the extremists began to count on gradual progress. They began with individual and then collective raids in 2006, until the situation has now reached the point of performing the entire “biblical ritual” publicly in the courtyards of the mosque during the course of the raids.

These provocations not only ignited Al-Aqsa Square and Jerusalem, but many popular uprisings erupted because of them, and the Gaza Strip and the West Bank caught fire because of them, until the Hamas movement called the current battle “Al-Aqsa Flood,” sending a message - in the first hour of its launch - of the necessity of the occupation removing its hand from this mosque. Al-Aqsa.

Just as he attended the mosque at the moment of the first battle, he attends now under the terms of the truce. Regarding its inclusion among the conditions, the academic and expert on Israeli affairs, Muhammad Halsa, said that in exchange for Israeli intransigence and raising the ceiling of conditions and nos, and moving towards the return of settlement to the Gaza Strip and the displacement of Palestinians from it, it was necessary to confront this narrative and intransigence by raising the ceiling of Palestinian conditions, in order to avoid the ceiling of Israeli challenges. .

Muhammad Halsa said in an interview with Al Jazeera Net, "It is not reasonable for the Israelis to stipulate the erasure and exclusion of the Palestinian within the framework of this war, and then the issues of Palestinian demands remain related to the prisoners, the Gaza Strip, and the return of the displaced."

Academic Al-Maqdisi added that this condition gives the current battle another legal aspect in the context of Palestinian and Arab society as a whole. “Because our battle is not only about liberating prisoners and improving living conditions in Gaza.”

He continued, "Rather, there is another important thing, which is that the battle was called the 'Al-Aqsa Flood,' and therefore there is no meaning in excluding this holy site, and the persecution, abuse, incursions, and Israeli settlement and intelligence incursion into it, from the framework of the deal."

Suicide for the right-wing government

In his answer to the question of whether the Israelis would accept and deal with this condition, expert Muhammad Halsa explained that negotiations would take place, and there was a back and forth on these issues.

It is believed that the Israeli who turns his back on the conditions related to the number and quality of prisoners released and stopping the war and considers it a surrender, so what if talking about the issue of Al-Aqsa and the raids, which a positive response to it would be considered suicide for the right-wing government, which raises the slogan of storming Al-Aqsa and turning it into a “Biblical Talmudic” place?

Therefore, Muhammad Halsa believes that the Israeli position will come in the form of absolute nos, but he said, “The resistance has its word and its conditions, and no one knows where things will go, in the context of negotiations between the various parties in this regard.”

He believes that these political demands will add fuel to the fire. Because there are Israeli voices calling for preventing the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza and calling for the extermination of the population, and saying that there are no civilians and putting everyone in one basket, so there is no doubt that they will go to reject these issues.

But on the other hand, raising this issue is important for the resistance. Because it may reap, within the framework of broader understandings with the region and the region, gains for rearranging the scene and alleviating the severity of the violations at Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Criminalization

It is noteworthy that within the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which consists of 31 ministers, there are 16 who are classified as the “Temple Groups” bloc. Because they adopt its principles and work to achieve them.

According to a previous interview conducted by Al Jazeera Net with Jerusalem affairs researcher Ziad Buhais, this means that these ministers support the construction of the alleged “temple” in the place of Al-Aqsa, and are doing everything they can to transform it from a purely Islamic holy place into a shared one, while employing all the state’s military, political and economic capabilities. And the security to achieve this.

He added that the first representative of the "Zionist" movement was Meir Kahane, who entered the Knesset (the Israeli parliament) in 1984, and when he decided to run for elections in 1988, a special law was enacted to prevent him from doing so, and there was an agreement to criminalize the idea of ​​"religious Zionism" and keep it outside the political scene.

Then this movement returned and regained its ability to enter the Knesset in 2002 through the National Religious Party, and since then the presence of “temple groups” has increased in successive governments.

"Religious Zionism" is a political spectrum that tends not to participate in the government, but rather to form militias that impose their views, using the state as a cover for them. But specifically with regard to the idea of ​​establishing the "temple", the groups tried to penetrate society and political systems through licensed official organizations, according to Ziad.

The dispersed organizations and movements formed the “Union of Temple Organizations” in 2013, and its number reached 24 institutions that year. Today, 47 institutions fall under the umbrella of the Union, which confirms the gradual rise of the system of “structure” institutions, in terms of number, organization, cohesion, and ability to mobilize funding, in conjunction with the ability to ascend parliamentary and governmental positions.

Source: Al Jazeera