Israel-Palestine updates: Police raid Al-Aqsa for a second night

The Bureau of the United Nation General Assembly’s Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People has condemned Israeli police’s raids on Palestinian worshippers inside Al-Aqsa Mosque.

“Israel’s illegal policies and practices have continued to entrench its illegal occupation of the Palestinian territory it has occupied since 1967,” the bureau said in a statement.

It called for accountability of Israel’s violations in the occupied Palestinian territory and urged Israel to comply with its international legal obligations under UN resolutions.

“The bureau calls for respect the freedom of all worshippers to access the religious sites in accordance with established parameters,” it said.

At least 397 of the 450 Palestinians arrested by Israeli police during Tuesday night’s raid have been released with a one-week ban from entering Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Palestinian Commission of Detainees Affairs has said in a statement.

Forty-seven detainees who belonged to the occupied West Bank have been transferred to the Ofer military prison, while the detention and interrogation of six Palestinians from occupied Jerusalem has been extended.

“The conditions of arrest and detention are humiliating and inhumane, and no medical attention is being provided to the injured detainees,” the commission said in its statement.

Palestinian men under the age of 40 are not being allowed to enter Al-Aqsa Mosque by Israeli police, witnesses tell Al Jazeera.

“A man drove two hours from northern Israel to make it in time for Fajr [dawn] prayer, but he was not allowed inside the mosque,” Al Jazeera’s Natasha Ghoneim reported from occupied East Jerusalem.

A crowd of 200 people had gathered outside the mosque because they were unaware of a change in policy.

“We have reached out to Israeli police to confirm if this constitutes a new restriction but have yet to receive an answer,” Ghoneim said.

Tension is running high in the Gaza Strip after the use of force by Israeli police in the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound for two consecutive nights.

“There is a high sense of worry among the people here as they associate Ramadan with memories of violence,” Al Jazeera’s Youmna ElSayed reported from Gaza.

The month of Ramadan in the past few years has seen Israeli forces attack worshippers at Islam’s third holiest site, and prevented them from spending the night inside the mosque for Itikaf – an Islamic practice of spending a few days inside a mosque during Ramadan.

“Israeli forces storm Al-Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan, which provokes the feelings of Palestinians in particular and Muslims in general,” ElSayed said.

Experience Islam’s third holiest site in more detail than ever before through this ultra-high definition experience.

Israeli police have cracked down on protests in the Palestinian towns of Umm al-Fahm and Baqa al-Gharbiyye in Israel, firing tear gas and stun grenades at demonstrators.

At least four Palestinians were arrested in Umm al-Fahm as protests also spread to Haifa, Nazareth, Kafr Kanna and Arraba.

Dozens of Israeli settlers entered the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque under the protection of the Israeli police on Thursday morning. Earlier, Israeli police prevented Palestinian worshippers from entering the mosque for Fajr prayer.

Hundreds of Palestinians performed Fajr prayer in the vicinity of Al-Aqsa Mosque, local media reported.

Palestinian groups in Gaza launched several rockets from the blockaded enclave into Israel early on Thursday morning, the Times of Israel reported.

Citing the Israeli military, the newspaper said two of the rockets were fired in the direction of the Mediterranean Sea and five towards Israel.

The launches set off sirens in southern Israel, it added.

The Al-Aqsa compound sits on a plateau in East Jerusalem, which Israel captured in the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed in a move not recognised by most in the international community.

For Muslims, the compound hosts Islam’s third-holiest site, Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the Dome of the Rock, a seventh-century structure believed to be where the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven.

The compound is also where Jews believe the Biblical Jewish temples once stood and is known to them as Temple Mount.

Palestinians see Al-Aqsa as one of the few national symbols over which they retain some element of control. They are, however, fearful of a slow encroachment by Jewish groups akin to what happened at the Ibrahimi Mosque (Cave of the Patriarchs) in Hebron, where half of the mosque was turned into a synagogue after 1967.

Palestinians are also worried about far-right Israeli movements that want to demolish the Islamic structures in the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and build a Jewish temple there.

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Malaysia has condemned the latest raids at Al-Aqsa in the “strongest terms” calling on the international community to hold Israel accountable.

“The actions by the Israeli forces were unlawful, contemptuous and grossly violating the human rights of the Palestinians and the sanctity of the third holiest shrine in Islam,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement from Putrajaya, the country’s administrative capital, on Thursday.

The UN Security Council will hold an emergency session on Thursday to discuss the violence at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, according to diplomats.

The closed-door meeting was called at the request of the United Arab Emirates and China, diplomats told the Reuters news agency.

Dozens of Palestinians have been wounded by Israeli forces across the occupied West Bank after the Al-Aqsa Mosque was raided for the second night in a row, according to the Wafa news agency.

At least 12 people were wounded when Israeli forces hurled canisters with poisonous gas in Nablus, the agency said, while another was hit by live ammunition in the town of Beit Ummar near the northern city of Hebron.

Dozens of people in Beit Ummar also reported suffocating from poisonous gas, Wafa reported.

The agency also reported violence near the cities of Jenin and Bethlehem.

The Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem is one of the holiest sites in the world and one of the most contested.

Why is it so significant? What’s been changing? And why is it emblematic of the wider Palestinian struggle?

Canada’s New Democratic Party is urging the government to take action after the latest Al-Aqsa raids saying the country can “no longer stand on the sidelines”.

Party leader Jagmeet Singh described the violence of the police raids as “terrifying, disturbing and brutal” and said the NDP would move a motion in parliament to discuss a Canadian response.

“Whether people are fasting for Ramadan or celebrating freedom from oppression in Passover, they should be guaranteed the right to peaceful worship,” fellow NDP legislator Blake Desjarlais said in a statement shared on Twitter.

Tensions following the latest Al-Aqsa raid have spilt over into other parts of occupied East Jerusalem.

A teenage boy, 14, has reportedly been shot in the arm with live ammunition after an encounter with Israeli forces.

Demonstrators outside the Fatih Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey, held a protest in support of Palestinian worshippers who were forcibly removed from the Al-Aqsa mosque on Wednesday.

They waved Palestinian flags and chanted slogans denouncing the violence, which took place as Israeli police raided the holy site for a second time.

Photos from the news agency Reuters show Israeli border police positioned near the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound on April 5, the day a raid was carried out on the mosque, removing an estimated 350 worshippers during the holy month of Ramadan.

Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations, condemned Israeli action at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in a press conference on Wednesday, saying it is the “exclusive right of the Palestinian Muslims” to practise their religious traditions there.

“It is the right of the Palestinian Muslim worshippers to exercise their religious duties and prayers in this holy month of Ramadan and in any other time in this holy Aqsa Mosque,” Mansour said.

“The Israeli occupying authority has no right whatsoever to tell people when to pray and when not to pray.”

The Arab League – a regional organisation of 22 member countries – is holding an emergency meeting on the raids at Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Hossam Zaki, the league’s assistant secretary general, told Al Jazeera: “We lay the blame totally and squarely on the Israeli government.”

“We are going to work, politically and diplomatically, to expose what Israel has been doing,” he continued.

“It’s not that we need another excuse from the Israeli occupation forces to storm in the Al-Aqsa Mosque. They never run out of excuses. They always tell you that there will be youth barricading, amassing guns and so on. We’ve heard it so many times. It is almost irrelevant at this point. This is a government that is bent on harming the Palestinian population.”