49 Palestinians injured by Israelis in al-Quds clashes

Nearly 50 Palestinians have been reported wounded in Jerusalem al-Quds in clashes with Israeli forces.

The Red Crescent in al-Quds reports that 49 Palestinians were wounded by noon in the Old City on Tuesday.

Among the wounded were 14 that incurred injures from rubber bullets while 16 suffered from tear gas inhalation. The rest of the injured were beaten by Israeli forces, Ynet reported.

Israeli police said its forces fired rubber bullets and stun grenades to disperse the crowd which gathered in differed neighborhoods in East al-Quds to protest the inauguration of a rebuilt synagogue in the Old City near the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.

The police had deployed around 3,000 forces in the city after Hamas called for uprisings against the reopening of the Hurva synagogue. Palestinians have described the US-backed action by the Israeli regime as ‘the first step’ in an Israeli ploy to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the name of rebuilding a Jewish Temple (Temple Mount) on its ruins.

The synagogue was destroyed during the 1948 Middle East war.

Israel is “determined to empty Jerusalem of its residents step by step… and it is trying to remove the Al-Aqsa Mosque and other Islamic and Christian sacred monuments,” Hamas deputy chief Moussa Abu Marzuk told Al-Jazeera television.

“There must be plans to confront these Zionist plans, to be carried out over the long term, and not temporary actions that quench the rage and then end,” he added.

Observers in the region describe the controversial move by the Israeli regime as an act of provocation that has been deliberately timed to coincide with a supposed tension between Washington and Tel Aviv over the expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.