Israeli outrage

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April 23, 2022

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Umair Jalali describes a despicable act

Israeli outrage hubris certainly knows no bounds and it is reflected in the totally intolerant attitude towards the unarmed civilian Palestinians exhibited by Israeli authorities. In a spate of high-handed violent actions the Israeli police unleashed a reign of terror on the protesting Palestinians that has angered the world opinion. Israeli police raided the Al-Aqsa mosque compound on Friday with at least 20 wounded in the first face-off in the area since the start of Ramadan. The Islamic endowment that runs the site said Israeli police entered in by force before dawn as thousands of worshippers were gathered at the mosque for early morning prayers. Israeli police said three officers were hurt.

Israeli police justified its action as an attempt to break up a violent crowd that remained at the end of the morning prayers. It said dozens of masked men marched into Al-Aqsa chanting and setting off fireworks before crowds hurled stones towards the Western Wall – considered the holiest site where Jews can pray. Israeli security forces fired rubber-coated bullets towards some Palestinian protesters, who threw stones at forces. The latest clashes come after three tense weeks of deadly violence in Israel and the occupied West Bank, and as the Jewish festival of Passover and Christian Easter overlap with Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting.

Al-Aqsa is Islam’s third holiest site. Jews refer to it as the Temple Mount, referencing two temples said to have stood there in antiquity. The compound is at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, falling within Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem. Before Ramadan began this month, Israel and Jordan, which serves as custodian of holy places in occupied east Jerusalem, stepped up talks in an effort to avoid a repeat of last year’s violence. Last year during the Muslim month of fasting, clashes that flared in Jerusalem, including between Israeli forces and Palestinians visiting Al-Aqsa, led to 11 days of devastating strikes by Israel on the Gaza Strip.

It is reported that Israeli outrage has poured additional forces into the West Bank and is reinforcing its wall and fence barrier with the occupied territory after four deadly attacks in the Jewish state that have mostly killed civilians in the past three weeks. A total of 14 people have been killed in the attacks since 22 March, including a shooting spree in Bnei Brak, an Orthodox Jewish city in greater Tel Aviv, carried out by a Palestinian attacker from Jenin. Twenty-one Palestinians have been killed in that time, including assailants who targeted Israelis. Earlier Israel announced it would block crossings from the West Bank and Gaza Strip into Israel from Friday afternoon through Saturday, the first two nights of the week-long Passover festival and potentially keep the crossings closed for the rest of the holiday.

It was noted with concern that Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has given Israeli forces a free hand to defeat terror in the territory which Israeli outrage has occupied since the 1967 Six-Day War, warning that there would not be limits for the campaign. Some of the attacks in Israel were carried out by Arab citizens of Israel linked to or inspired by the Islamic State group, others by Palestinians, and cheered by militant groups including Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Three Palestinians died Thursday as Israeli forces launched fresh raids into the West Bank flashpoint district of Jenin, a week after the Bnei Brak attack.

The problem exacerbated when more clashes took place in which reportedly more than 170 people got injured at a tense time when the Jewish Passover festival coincides with Ramadan. Early on hundreds of Palestinian demonstrators inside the mosque compound purportedly started gathering piles of stones, shortly before the arrival of Jewish visitors. Jews are allowed to visit but not to pray at the site, also known as Temple Mount. The police said its forces had entered the compound in order to remove the demonstrators and re-establish order. Many barefoot Jewish worshippers were seen leaving the site protected by heavily armed police.
Outside the Old City, in Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem, Palestinian youths reportedly threw rocks at passing buses, resulting in seven people being treated for light wounds at Shaare Zedek hospital. Video released by the police showed two Israeli buses, their windscreens and side windows smashed in, driving down a road near the Old City as young men showered them with rocks. Later on, mosques in Palestinian neighbourhoods of annexed east Jerusalem broadcast calls for people to head towards the Al-Aqsa compound. The United Nations has called for calm, a year after clashes in and around the mosque compound escalated into an 11-day war between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza. Despite the tensions, a few streets away from the Al-Aqsa compound hundreds of Christians staged a noisy parade through the alleys of Jerusalem’s Old City to mark Easter at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre where they believe Jesus was crucified.
In the latest outrage, Israel carried out its first airstrike on the Gaza Strip in months early on Tuesday, in response to a rocket allegedly fired from the Palestinian enclave after a weekend of violence around a Jerusalem holy site. The army also said its special forces had made five arrests overnight in the occupied West Bank, which has seen a string of deadly Israeli raids since an uptick in attacks and demonstrations four weeks ago. On Monday, warning sirens sounded after a rocket was purportedly fired into southern Israel from the blockaded enclave, controlled by Hamas, in the first such incident since early January. The Israeli military said that the rocket had been intercepted by the Iron Dome air defence system. Hours later, the Israeli air force said it had hit a Hamas weapons factory in retaliation. Hamas claimed to have used its anti-aircraft defences to counter the raid, which caused no casualties. No faction in the crowded enclave of 2.3 million inhabitants immediately claimed responsibility for the rocket.
The tensions caused by such incidents are rising by the day with a total of 23 Palestinians and Arab-Israelis killed, including alleged assailants who are said to have targeted Israelis in four deadly attacks. Diplomatic sources said the United Nations Security Council was to meet to discuss the spike in violence. Israeli police said they had refused to authorise a march Jewish nationalists had planned around the walls of the Old City as a similar parade last year, following a similar wave of violence, was interrupted by rocket fire from Gaza which in turn triggered an 11-day war killing at least 260 Palestinians including many fighters and 14 people on the Israeli side including a soldier.
Hamas has vowed to defend Al Aqsa’s status as a pure Islamic site but analysts have said that the movement does not want a war at present, partly because its military capacities were degraded by the last one. They say Hamas is also wary that a new conflict could prompt Israel to cancel thousands of work permits issued in recent months to residents of impoverished Gaza, where unemployment is near 50 per cent. But Islamic Jihad, another Palestinian faction which Israel says has thousands of fighters and rockets in the enclave, said that the enemy’s threats to cut off aid to Gaza will not force them into silence over what is happening in Jerusalem. TW
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Umair Jalali teaches in Denning Law School and is an avid sports fan