(RNS) — The determination by the Israeli authorities to cessation the third-holiest mosque in Islam came as fasting worshippers had been within the center of Ramadan, the holiest month within the Islamic calendar.
Muslims fear that Israel, which said the Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al Haram al-Sharif closure was due security amid the war in Iran, will misuse the situation to normalize and additional tighten the Israeli police’s grip on the mosque and its management. They are also alive to that the closure will probably be abused to dig internal and beneath the mosque, as Israel did when it placed digital gates at the mosque’s entrance in 2017 and during the COVID-19 pandemic.
An estimated fewer than 5% of worshippers from all over Palestine have had access to Al-Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan anyway. In addition to age restrictions for Palestinians living in Jerusalem and internal the Green Line to visit the mosque, almost 5.5 million Palestinians within the West Bank and Gaza have been denied access during the last two decades, excluding for a very small quantity allowed to enter Jerusalem from the West Bank — and simplest on Friday and simplest within the month of Ramadan.
Osama Salah, owner of the National Palace Resort in east Jerusalem, said that his hotelier trade depends heavily on Ramadan, as attain town’s merchants and shopkeepers, to conquer the commercial crisis town is facing. “We depend upon Muslim vacationers, especially during the last 20 days of Ramadan, when hotel occupancy rates exceed 100%. The hotel is usually packed with overseas Muslims and those from internal Israel,” he urged me. “Nonetheless, today, on account of the war with Iran, the airport closures and the closure of Al-Aqsa Mosque, occupancy rates have plummeted to a mere 2%.”
He said that because the Iran conflict began, 5 hotels in Jerusalem have closed temporarily. “Now we are suffering abominable losses, and we had hoped that Ramadan would lend a hand us overcome this financial hardship for the following couple of months. However we are in a state of entire devastation,” he said. “Even during the past war, the war on Gaza, bookings exceeded 80% because the international borders and airports had been now not closed and Al-Aqsa Mosque was now not shut down.”
Salah, who care for many others performs his prayers in Al-Aqsa, said he also feels deep spiritual sadness on account of its closure.
“I don’t really feel at peace, now not even the spirituality of Ramadan, excluding after I am in Al-Aqsa,” he said.
Al-Aqsa/Al Haram al-Sharif is regarded as the third-holiest mosque in Islam, after Mecca and Medina. The mosque area compromises a major part of the Venerable Metropolis of Jerusalem, spanning 144,000 square meters or 36 acres, and involves the silver-domed Qibla Mosque, the Dome of the Rock, the Islamic Museum and a lot of different constructions.
It was constructed by the Umayyad Caliphs in 715, and for the past 13 centuries it has been a steady place of cherish for Muslims. The excellent prolonged closure length (88 years) was when it came below the rule of thumb of the European Crusaders from 1099 until 1187. During this length, the mosque ceased to operate as a place of Islamic cherish, serving instead as a royal palace and the headquarters for the Knights Templar. It was restored as a mosque after Saladin, the Muslim sultan of Egypt, Syria, Yemen and Palestine, liberated town in 1187. Today, the main trade road in Jerusalem, Salah al-Din, is named after him.
Aside from the Crusade length, the mosque was closed for a few days after the 1967 Israeli occupation and during the coronavirus pandemic. Muslims refused to enter the mosque area for 14 days in 2017, after Israel’s determination to place metal detectors at the entrances. Thousands of Muslim worshippers refused to enter the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem and instead prayed within the streets to grunt the safety measures, and they returned to cherish as soon as the metal detectors had been removed by the Israelis.
Al-Aqsa Mosque has been managed by Muslims for 12 centuries. After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the mosque’s management was shifted to the Hashemites, the Jordanian royal family that since 1924 has been its official custodians. That year, the Supreme Muslim Council in Jerusalem accepted the guardianship of Sharif Hussein bin Ali, the sharif of Mecca and leader of the Arab Get up.
The Jordanian Waqf ministry is guilty for day-to-day management, including paying the salaries of the nearly 1,000 guards and staff of the Islamic sites in Jerusalem. Jordan’s successive kings have also donated to the reconstruction and rehabilitation of the mosque, especially after the 1969 attempt by a radical Australian Christian Zionist to burn it down.
Some U.S. Christian Zionists, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who are supporting the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran have sought the destruction of the mosque. Video of Hegseth from earlier than he became defense secretary reveals him calling for the rebuilding of the Jewish temple at the positioning, which would mean destroying the Islamic shrine.
Whereas the Israeli police’s determination to cessation the mosque can be justified for security reasons, it was now not done in coordination with the Waqf authorities but by armed Israeli security forces who, along with the unarmed Jordanian Waqf guards, man all entrances to Al-Aqsa.
Diverse holy sites had been also closed on account of the war, care for the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Jewish Western Wall, but in coordination with the relevant spiritual authorities. Palestinians and Jordanians attain now not understand the justification for security measures forced on the Venerable Metropolis holy sites, which are stronger than measures impacting other neighborhoods in east Jerusalem.
Decisions about holy cherish places must now not be part of the political conflict that has emerged during Israel’s far-moral-flit, racist police minister’s tenure. And whereas Israel has allowed gatherings of up to 50 folks during the wartime emergency measures, it has refused such permission to Muslim worshippers, who are certain that Islam’s third-holiest mosque may now not be a target of the Iranian Islamic Republic.
“I am hoping this nightmare for Al-Aqsa ends and that worshippers return as earlier than,” said Sheikh Azzam al-Khatib, chair of the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf Council.
Despite the closure, extremely restricted Friday prayers had been held in Al-Aqsa on the third Friday of Ramadan, with out worshippers. Handiest the imam, the preacher and a preference of Waqf guards attended. As the products and providers went on, Jerusalem residents gathered at Israeli police checkpoints to the Venerable Metropolis and held Friday prayers, connecting to the mosque the closest way they may.
(Daoud Kuttab is the creator of Milhilard.org, a information dilemma targeted on Christians in Palestine, Israel and Jordan. The views expressed in this commentary attain now not necessarily replicate those of Religion News Service.)
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