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Clashes erupted in Jerusalem after Israel shut the Al Aqsa Mosque on Eid Al Fitr for the first time since 1967, following a night of heavy Iranian bombardment on the city.
Police fired stun grenades and beat back crowds who were saying prayers for the first day of Eid, on the streets leading to Al Aqsa. Footage from the scene showed hundreds of worshippers walking towards the gates of the Old City chanting “God is the Greatest”, before Israeli forces cracked down, rapidly dispersing the area with clouds of tear gas.
It followed one of the heaviest nights of Iranian bombardment of Jerusalem since the war began, with barrages continuing throughout the morning.
Israeli authorities shut the Al Aqsa Mosque – the third holiest site in Islam – as well as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Western Wall, when Israel and the US launched the war on Iran at the end of February.
The Palestinian-run Jerusalem Governorate said the closure of the mosque was “an unprecedented escalation” in a statement on Thursday, adding that the ban took place “in the context of a systematic policy aimed at imposing new facts and isolating the Al Aqsa Mosque from its Palestinian and Islamic surroundings”.
Israel’s police said they used “dispersal means to prevent a dangerous overcrowding situation, particularly as falling munitions and missile sirens can occur at any moment in an area with limited to no protected shelter”.
Jerusalem lawyer and activist Daniel Seidemann criticised the police's response in a post on X that compared images of a large outdoor party in Jerusalem for the Jewish holiday of Purim, which took place during the war with no police dispersal, to violent scenes from Friday's crackdown.
The mosque and its compound have been bitterly contested throughout the Israel-Palestine conflict. The area is supposed to be overseen by the Waqf, a Jordanian organisation that maintains the site under an agreement that limits non-Muslim presence. Bans on non-Islamic religious practice and pro-Israel expressions are particularly strict, but ultranationalist Jews have been gradually pushing the boundaries on the compound, particularly during the term of the current far-right government.
The site is also holy for Jews, who believe it to be where the first and second Jewish temples stood. There is a growing movement in Israel to build a third temple at the site, which has powerful backers in the Christian world, too.
Eight Muslim-majority countries condemned Israel’s closure of the mosque last week. Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates called the move “a flagrant violation of international law”.
The mosque was open for the first two Friday prayers of Ramadan, although there were strict limits on the number of worshippers who could come to Jerusalem from the occupied West Bank.
