Fresh clashes between Israeli police and Palestinian demonstrators erupted Friday morning on the esplanade of the Jerusalem Mosques, a place at the heart of tensions that have spilled over in recent days into the Gaza Strip.
• Read also: Rocket salvo towards Israel, airstrikes on Gaza
• Read also: After violence in Jerusalem, rocket fire at Israel
Early Friday morning, Israeli police entered the esplanade, Islam’s third holiest site and Judaism’s holiest site known as the Temple Mount, and Palestinian youths threw stones at them, noted an AFP journalist on the spot.
Israeli police say around 4 a.m. Palestinian “masked rioters carrying Hamas flags” threw stones at the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest prayer site, located below the esplanade Mosques in the Old City of Jerusalem.
The Palestinian Red Crescent has reported at least 27 injured, two seriously, in a first assessment of these clashes.
The situation remained tense on the esplanade on this third Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan – which coincides with the end of the celebrations of Passover, the Jewish Passover – after exchanges of throwing stones and firing rubber bullets.
Over the past week, more than 200 people, mostly Palestinians, have been injured in clashes in and around the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in East Jerusalem, the Palestinian sector of the Holy City occupied and annexed by Israel.
This new escalation of tensions has also led to rocket attacks by Palestinian armed groups from the Gaza Strip towards Israel and Israeli strikes in retaliation on this Palestinian enclave of 2.3 million inhabitants under Israeli blockade and controlled by Hamas. Islamist.
Status quo ?
The presence on the site during Ramadan of many Jews – authorized to visit the site under certain conditions and at specific times without praying there, according to the status quo in force – and the deployment of police forces on site were widely perceived by Palestinians and several countries in the region as a gesture of “provocation”.
Several Arab ministers gathered in the Jordanian capital thus condemned “the Israeli attacks and violations against the faithful of the Al-Aqsa mosque”, on the esplanade of the Mosques, a site administered by Jordan, but whose access is controlled by the Hebrew state.
“Israel preserves and will continue to preserve the status quo on the Temple Mount” but “under no circumstances will we accept rocket fire from the Gaza Strip,” Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said Thursday.
He had just met the US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, Yael Lempert, and the emissary in charge of Israeli-Palestinian relations, Hady Amr.
The two American officials then spoke Thursday evening with the leaders of the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas, which sits in the occupied West Bank.
“The president (Abbas) has requested the urgent intervention of the American administration in order to put an end once and for all to the Israeli escalation in the Palestinian territories”, declared after the meeting Hussein al-Sheikh, a tenor of the Palestinian Authority.
Rockets
Palestinian armed groups launched a salvo of rockets from Gaza to Israel overnight from Wednesday to Thursday, which led to retaliatory strikes on the Palestinian enclave, raising fears of a new military escalation between Hamas and the Israeli army on background of tensions related to the holy sites in Jerusalem.
Six rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip towards Israel, four of which were intercepted by the Israeli anti-missile shield, one crashed into Gaza and the last fell on the Israeli town of Sderot without causing any injuries, a said the Israeli army.
These rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip are the largest since the deadly 11-day war that pitted Hamas against Israel in May 2021 after weeks of tension in Jerusalem.