While the Mughrabi Gate was closed to settlers, thousands of Palestinians attended Al-Aqsa Mosque to commemorate the Night Journey (Al-Jazeera)

Occupied Jerusalem

- About 15,000 Palestinians from Jerusalem and the occupied interior attended Al-Aqsa Mosque, today, Thursday, in commemoration of the Isra’ Miraj. At the same time, the occupation police closed the Mughrabi Gate in the face of settler incursions.

While it restricted the entry of Palestinians to Al-Aqsa Mosque over a period of 5 days in December last year, it allowed more than 1,300 settlers to storm it to commemorate the Jewish Festival of Lights, in a clear embodiment of the temporal division in Al-Aqsa Mosque.

The terms "temporal division" and "spatial division" were used to warn against the consequences of their application in Al-Aqsa Mosque, but the last decade revealed a gradual forced application of temporal division in particular, which consists of allocating specific days or times for Muslims to pray in Al-Aqsa, and others for Jews to pray there.

In 2003, the occupation opened the Mughrabi Gate - one of the doors of Al-Aqsa Mosque - to settlers wishing to storm the mosque for a religious purpose, not a tourist one. They began storming the mosque in organized groups and under special guard from the police and occupation forces. They are allocated specific hours in the morning and afternoon, 5 days a week, during which Muslims are restricted from entering the mosque.

Since October 7, the occupation has imposed strict measures on worshipers entering Friday prayers at Al-Aqsa Mosque (Al Jazeera)

Jewish holidays

Since 2015, the restrictions on the entry of Muslim worshipers to Al-Aqsa have increased during Jewish holidays and occasions, in exchange for public security for settlers’ intrusion, on the following holidays: Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Sukkot, Sukkot, Purim, Passover, Torch Festival, and Descent. The Torah, and 6 separate days of fasting.

During those holidays, the occupation intensified campaigns of deportation from the mosque against Palestinian activists and stationers. Entry - during the storming period - was limited to elderly people only, and the police withheld worshipers’ ID cards at the doors as a condition for entry.

In many cases, entry was completely prohibited, under the pretext of “preserving public order.” Worshipers also confirmed to Al Jazeera Net that the police explained the ban in the morning because it was not time for prayer.

The occupation police tried to appear as a neutral party wishing to achieve order and security inside Al-Aqsa Mosque, so they deliberately stopped the raids and closed the Mughrabi Gate during Islamic religious occasions such as the anniversary of the Isra and Mi’raj, the Prophet’s birthday, the Hijri New Year, and the last ten days of Ramadan.

However, if an Islamic religious event intersected with a Jewish one, the police would allow the intrusion and provide maximum protection to the settlers in exchange for suppressing the worshipers, as happened during the last ten days of Ramadan in 2021.

Is he similar to Ibrahimi?

The danger of temporal division lies in the recognition that the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque is divisible between Muslims and Jews. Here, Abdullah Marouf, professor of Jerusalem studies, tells Al Jazeera Net that dividing the mosque temporally or spatially means changing the status quo in it permanently.

He added, "Any division in Al-Aqsa will be the beginning of a programmed process to change the status quo in the mosque towards full control, as happened in the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron."

The Ibrahimi Mosque is a clear example of the temporal and spatial division, as it was completely occupied in 1967, and was closed for months after the massacre that occurred there in 1994, and then it was transformed into a military barracks filled with surveillance cameras and electronic gates, and surmounted by Israeli flags, and parts of it were cut off for the settlers permanently, and during Jewish holidays are completely closed to Palestinians, and open to settlers.

The occupation tried to project its experience in Al-Ibrahimi onto Al-Aqsa, but it collided with the attack at Lions Gate in 2017 when it tried to establish electronic gates at its gates, and its plan failed.

However, the threat of spatial division still threatens the eastern area near Bab al-Rahma, where the invading settlers perform their silent and public prayers, hold lectures and lessons, and carry out collective religious rituals such as epic prostration, offering plant sacrifices on Sukkot, and memorializing their dead soldiers.

During the storming period, the occupation police prevent worshipers and guards of Al-Aqsa Mosque from approaching the eastern region completely, and arrest and deport anyone who violates this.

Settlers perform their silent and public rituals in the Bab al-Rahma area in the eastern part of Al-Aqsa Mosque (Al-Jazeera)

The danger of spatial division

Marouf believes that the implementation of the plan for the Ibrahimi Mosque in Al-Aqsa is linked to the popular reaction, which in his opinion represents the only deterrent, saying that passing any violation means enabling the occupation to advance additional steps towards its dream of complete control over Al-Aqsa Mosque, in light of the habit of partition and making it a fait accompli.

Although the restrictions on the gates of Al-Aqsa Mosque have intensified in an unprecedented manner since the seventh of last October, the temporal division existed before that, and was evident during the storming of the Jewish Sukkot holiday that preceded the Battle of Al-Aqsa Flood.

Marouf warns that the spatial division may be the next step after the temporal division, saying, “The occupation may work to allocate part of the mosque for settlers’ prayers, specifically in the eastern region, and if the Palestinian and Arab silence remains deafening, it will open the occupation’s appetite to carve out additional areas that were previously announced, such as the corner.” The southwestern or northern squares.

Source: Al Jazeera