OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)
Head of Hamas’s Jerusalem affairs office Haroun Nasiruddin has said that the escalating desecration of the Aqsa Mosque by Jewish settlers requires double efforts from Muslim worshipers to protect it.
In a statement on Monday, Nasiruddin warned that the recent settler violations at the Aqsa Mosque, especially during Jewish holidays, are aimed at imposing new faits accomplis at the Islamic holy site as part of an Israeli plan to Judaize it and fully control it.
Nasiruddin called for necessarily intensifying the official and popular efforts to defend and protect the Aqsa Mosque against the Israeli occupation authority and Jewish temple groups who plan to demolish the holy site and build a temple in its place.
The Hamas official described the Jewish holidays and religious events as “critical periods for the Aqsa Mosque,” saying Jewish settlers increase their provocative religious practices in the Mosque’s courtyards during these occasions as a prelude to routinizing their rituals.
He urged Muslim worshipers to intensify their presence at the Aqsa Mosque at all times, stressing that the Palestinians in the West Bank, Jerusalem and 1948 Occupied Palestine have a vital role in protecting the Mosque and other Palestinian holy sites against desecration and Judaization.
In a related context, hundreds of extremist Jewish settlers desecrated the Aqsa Mosque in Occupied Jerusalem on Monday to mark the fifth day of the Sukkot holiday in its courtyards.
The Islamic Awqaf Administration in the holy city said that 1,780 settlers defiled the Aqsa Mosque in different groups under police escort in the morning and later in the afternoon.
