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Nearly one yr after confrontations between Palestinians and Israeli safety forces in Jerusalem led to warfare within the Gaza Strip, escalating pressure within the metropolis in the course of the holy month of Ramadan has raised fears that occasions of 2021 might repeat.
At the very least 158 Palestinians had been wounded when Israeli riot police raided the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound on Friday the place they had been met by stone throwing and hurled firecrackers.
The Al-Aqsa compound sits on a plateau in occupied East Jerusalem, which Israel captured within the 1967 Six-Day Conflict and later annexed in a transfer not recognised by most within the worldwide group.
For Muslims, the compound hosts Islam’s third-holiest web site, the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the Dome of the Rock, a seventh-century construction believed to be the place the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven.
The compound can be the place Jews imagine the Biblical Jewish temples as soon as stood and is thought to them as Temple Mount.
The contested web site has been the focus of the decades-long Israeli occupation of the West Financial institution.
“Jerusalem is probably the primary problem that has the potential of triggering wide-scale violence,” mentioned Khalil Shikaki, director of the Palestinian Middle for Coverage and Survey Analysis.
“Now we have seen that previously,” he mentioned.
Lethal assaults on Israelis by Palestinians previously two weeks and Israeli troopers killing Palestinians within the occupied West Financial institution has precipitated outrage and the temperature within the holy metropolis is reaching boiling level because the festivals of Ramadan, Passover and Easter are all marked this month.
Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh described the Israeli police raid on the Al-Aqsa Mosque as a “brutal assault on worshippers in the course of the holy month”, and a harmful omen.
At a rally in Gaza, a spokesman for Hamas, which guidelines the enclave, mentioned that Israel’s use of pressure on the holy web site wouldn’t go unanswered.
“We’ll draw the road once more in defence of Jerusalem and we’ll launch a brand new period; weapons for weapons, and pressure will solely be met by pressure, and we’ll defend Jerusalem by all our would possibly,” the spokesman Fawzi Barhoum mentioned.
Nearly a yr in the past in Might 2021, Palestinian armed teams fired rockets into Israel after Hamas demanded Israeli police withdraw from Al-Aqsa and the Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah, the place a courtroom risk to dispossess Palestinian residents led to protests and confrontations.
Within the 11-day warfare that adopted, 250 Palestinians in Gaza and 13 folks in Israel had been killed.
Israel’s Prime Minister Naftali Bennett mentioned authorities are working to revive calm in Jerusalem and throughout Israel, however safety forces had been prepared if the scenario deteriorated.
“We’re making ready for any situation and the safety forces are prepared for any activity,” he mentioned in a press release.
Wave of killings
Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst, expects that additional escalation will happen within the coming days.
“I feel a complete era of Palestinian youth is just profiting from each attainable alternative, each attainable stone, each attainable gun, with a purpose to shout their method in opposition to the occupation,” he mentioned.
“In gentle of political and diplomatic paralysis, in gentle of the weak spot of the Palestinian Authority, and the indifference of assorted Arab regimes that only in the near past had been in mattress with the Israeli authorities, I feel we might see extra tensions and presumably one other rebellion.”
Final week, a Palestinian from a refugee camp within the occupied West Financial institution city of Jenin shot lifeless three Israelis and wounded a number of extra at a Tel Aviv bar.
The taking pictures was the most recent in a string of Palestinian assaults in Israeli cities which have killed 14 folks.
Bennett known as the assaults, which had been the deadliest since 2016, “a brand new wave of terror”.
The Israeli military has killed 47 Palestinians to this point this yr.
In line with the Euro-Med human rights monitor, that quantity represents nearly 5 instances the variety of Palestinians killed by the Israeli military throughout the identical time frame final yr.
“The authorisation of the Israeli politicians for the military and safety to function with ‘full freedom to defeat terrorism’ appeared to have paved the best way for the unjustified excuse to kill and abuse Palestinian civilians at navy checkpoints and within the cities, villages, and cities of the West Financial institution and East Jerusalem,” the monitor mentioned in a press release.
The elevated killing of Palestinians is linked to the Israeli military’s taking pictures coverage directions of December 20, which gave the inexperienced gentle for troopers within the occupied West Financial institution to open hearth on Palestinian youths who throw stones or Molotov cocktails, the monitor mentioned.
“There are not any restrictions on the usage of pressure,” Israeli International Minister Yair Lapid mentioned on Thursday, echoing Prime Minister Bennett.
He added that Israel would additionally permit Palestinians who “preserve the quiet” to work and have fun Ramadan with out disruptions.
Till Friday’s raid at Al-Aqsa, the international minister’s promise had appeared to ease some Palestinian frustrations, Shikaki mentioned.
Nevertheless, pent-up anger and grievances over Israel’s 55-year navy occupation of Palestinian territories outweighed the present concessions, he mentioned.
Within the occupied territories of the West Financial institution and East Jerusalem, the yr 2021 marked the best charge of Palestinian house demolitions since 2016, in response to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem.
Within the final 5 years, Israel has granted simply 33 constructing permits to Palestinians and greater than 16,500 constructing permits to Jewish settlers within the 60 p.c of the occupied West Financial institution it immediately controls, in response to Itay Epshtain, a humanitarian regulation and coverage advisor, citing information disclosed by Israel’s defence ministry.
“The entire construction that’s in place, of the occupation, is violent,” mentioned Diana Buttu, a former authorized adviser to the Palestine Liberation Group.
“It’s been many years of this, many years of day by day violence, and it will get to some extent the place ultimately it simply boomerangs again onto Israel.”
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