Palestinian Authority Denounces Israeli Settlers’ Storming of Al-Aqsa through Lions’ Gate

In a statement on Sunday, The Palestinian Authority’s foreign ministry condemned as “unprecedented” the storming of the mosque through the Lions’ Gate on the eastern side of the complex, which is solely used by Muslims, the official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.

The ministry described the storming as a blatant violation of the mosque’s status quo aimed at perpetuating the temporal division of al-Aqsa Mosque pending its spatial partition.

Over the past years, Israel has only allowed settler groups to storm the holy site through the Moroccan Gate, on the western side of the compound, but what happened on Sunday was unprecedented as it was the first time that Israeli police allowed settlers to use the Lions Gate since 1967.

According to Sheikh Omar Kiswani, the director of the mosque, the storming on Sunday was a serious violation of the status quo at the holy site and the agreements signed between Israel and Jordan, the custodian of Islamic and Christian sites in al-Quds.

Extremist Israeli settlers regularly storm the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in the occupied city, a provocative move that infuriates Palestinians. Such mass settler break-ins almost always take place at the behest of Tel Aviv-backed temple groups and under the auspices of the Israeli police in al-Quds.

The al-Aqsa Mosque compound, which purportedly sits just above the Western Wall plaza, houses the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque.

The Jewish visitation of al-Aqsa is permitted while non-Muslim worship at the compound is prohibited under an agreement signed between Israel and the Jordanian government in the wake of Israel’s occupation of East al-Quds in 1967.

Palestinians want the occupied West Bank as part of their future independent state and view al-Quds’ eastern sector as the capital of their future sovereign state.