Palestinians forced to pray in street after Israeli authorities close al-Aqsa mosque at Eid

One resident described it as ‘the saddest day for Muslim worshippers in Jerusalem’, as, for the first time since 1967, the al-Aqsa mosque – Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site – was closed at the end of Ramadan by Israeli authorities. Subscribe to Guardian News on YouTube ► https://www.youtube.com/user/guardianwires?sub_confirmation=1 Instead on Friday morning hundreds of worshippers were seen praying outside the Old City, holding Eid prayers as close as they could to the sealed site, as Israeli police barricaded the entrances. Israel said the closure was part of security measures d to the country’s escalating war with Iran, but Palestinians said the move was part of a wider Israeli strategy to leverage security tensions to tighten restrictions and entrench control over Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site. Known as al-Haram al-Sharif to Muslims, it also encompasses the seventh-century Dome of the Rock Islamic shrine. To Jews it is the Temple Mount, the site of the 10th-century BC first temple and second temple, which was destroyed by the Romans in AD70. ‘What I fear is that this sets a dangerous precedent. It may be the first time, but probably not the last. Israeli interference in the holy city has been escalating since 7 October [2023],’ Hazen Bulbul, a 48-year-old Jerusalem resident who has marked the end of Ramadan at al-Aqsa mosque since childhood, told the Guardian. #alaqsa #eid #palestine #israel #jerusalem