Over 200 Palestinians injured after Israeli forces attack Masjid Al-Aqsa

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, Palestine: At least 205 Palestinians and 17 Israeli policemen were injured in clashes at Islam’s third-holiest site and around East Jerusalem as thousands of Palestinians faced off with several hundred Israeli police in riot gear.

Israeli police fired rubber-coated metal bullets and stun grenades towards rock-hurling Palestinians at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque as anger grows over the potential eviction of Palestinians from homes on land claimed by Jewish settlers in East Jerusalem.

Violence erupted on Friday when Israeli police deployed heavily as Muslims were performing evening prayers at Al-Aqsa during the holy month of Ramadhan.

Video footage from the scene shows worshippers throwing chairs, shoes and rocks towards the police and officers opening fire. Israeli police also closed gates leading to Al-Aqsa inside the walled Old City.

The Palestine Red Crescent ambulance service said one of the injured lost an eye, two suffered serious head wounds, and two had their jaws fractured. Most were wounded in the face and eyes by rubber-coated rounds and shrapnel from stun grenades.

An Al-Aqsa official appealed for calm on the compound through the mosque’s loudspeakers. “Police must immediately stop firing stun grenades at worshippers, and the youth must calm down and be quiet.”

Tens of thousands of Palestinian worshippers earlier packed into the mosque on the final Friday of Ramadhan, and many stayed on to protest in support of Palestinians facing eviction from their homes on Israeli-occupied land claimed by Jewish settlers in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of East Jerusalem.

Calls for calm and restraint poured in from the United States and the United Nations, with others including the European Union and Jordan voicing alarm at the possible evictions.

“If we don’t stand with this group of people here, [evictions] will [come] to my house, her house, his house and to every Palestinian who lives here,” said protester Bashar Mahmoud, 23, from the nearby Palestinian neighbourhood of Issawiya.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he “held [Israel] responsible for the dangerous developments and sinful attacks taking place in the holy city”, and called on the UN Security Council to hold an urgent session on the issue. Abbas praised the “courageous stand” of the protesters.

With health restrictions mostly lifted following Israel’s swift coronavirus vaccine campaign, worshippers packed tightly together as they knelt in prayer on the tree-lined hilltop plateau containing the mosque, Islam’s third-holiest site.

However, thousands of Palestinians from the occupied West Bank were blocked from reaching the Al-Aqsa Mosque as Israeli forces set up several roadblocks and checkpoints along the way to the holy site.

Continuing tensions in the city at the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were front and centre in the Friday sermon given by Sheikh Tayseer Abu Sunainah.

“Our people will remain steadfast and patient in their homes, in our blessed land,” Abu Sunainah said of the multiple Palestinian families in East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood who could be evicted under a long-running legal case.

Following prayers, thousands remained in the compound to protest against the evictions, with many waving Palestinian flags and chanting a refrain common during Jerusalem protests: “With our soul and blood, we will redeem you, Aqsa”.

Israel’s Supreme Court will hold a hearing on the Sheikh Jarrah evictions on Monday. Israelis and Palestinians are bracing for more violence in the coming days.

Sunday night is “Laylat al-Qadr” or the “Night of Destiny”, the most sacred in the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Worshippers will gather for intense nighttime prayers at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem’s Old City.

Sunday night is also the start of Jerusalem Day, a national holiday in which Israel celebrates its annexation of East Jerusalem and religious nationalists hold parades and other celebrations in the city.

Sheikh Jarrah’s residents are overwhelmingly Palestinian, but the neighbourhood also contains a site revered by religious Jews as the tomb of an ancient high priest, Simeon the Just.

The spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said the evictions, “if ordered and implemented, would violate Israel’s obligations under international law” on East Jerusalem territory it captured and occupied in the 1967 Middle East war.

“We call on Israel to immediately halt all forced evictions, including those in Sheikh Jarrah, and to cease any activity that would further contribute to a coercive environment and lead to a risk of forcible transfer,” spokesman Rupert Colville said on Friday.

Israel’s foreign ministry said on Friday that Palestinians were “presenting a real-estate dispute between private parties as a nationalist cause in order to incite violence in Jerusalem”.

Over the past week, residents of Sheikh Jarrah, as well as Palestinian and international solidarity activists, have attended nightly vigils to support the Palestinian families under threat of forced displacement.

But on Friday, Israeli police blocked off the entrances of the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood to hundreds of Palestinians and solidarity activists trying to enter the area, said activists.