Palestinian women set off sit-in vigil at al-Aqsa gates

A congregation of Jerusalemite women and female students have flocked to Bab al-Silsila since early Wednesday morning in protest at Israeli police hounding and at being denied access into holy al-Aqsa Mosque to perform their religious prayers.

By-standers at the scene said the Israeli occupation police heavily discharged tear gas canisters to disband the rally.

The sit-in cropped up as the occupation police, cordoning off al-Aqsa gates, denied Muslim women access into the mosque at early Wednesday morning to perform their prayers.

The Israeli police officers have also prevented Palestinian citizens aged below 30 from getting into the mosque, imposing tight restrictions on elderly people and confiscating their IDs.

The occupation police have come down heavily on the Palestinian female sit-inners, forcing them away from al-Aqsa gates. The peaceful female congregation further fell prey to the assaults launched by hordes of Israeli settler gangs and soldiers across the alleys of the Old City.

The demonstrating female masses pushed their way through Jerusalem streets, yelling pro-al-Aqsa chants.

Palestinian shopkeepers passed around bottles of water to the demonstrators in a solidarity move aiming at boosting women’s fight for their right of entry into holy al-Aqsa round-the-clock.

Palestinian women have only been allowed access into the holy mosque at 3 p.m. after the Israeli police shut al-Maghareba gate, the chief aperture to the torrents of Israeli desecration break-ins carried out by extremist settler gangs.

The demonstrating women were forced to perform al-Dhuhr (noon) prayers at al-Asbat gate due to police bullying.

In a related development, the Israeli occupation police issued a 15-day deportation order from al-Aqsa against two Palestinian citizens, identified as Salah Mahamid and Abdullah Shami after having nabbed them on Tuesday under pretext of having run riots inside of the mosque.

The Israeli policeman rounded up three more Palestinians identified as Bayan Iblassi, Mahmoud Abu Basal, and Khaled Talouza.

Al-Aqsa Foundation for Reconstruction denounced such obnoxious misdemeanors against the peaceful Muslim congregation, particularly women and students, dubbing them dodgy threats targeting the historically Islamic character of holy al-Aqsa.

The foundation further spoke out against police back-up of settler-break-ins as part of the Israeli Judaization schemes aiming at enforcing an odd reality on al-Aqsa

The foundation said the military and cement checkpoints erected randomly around al-Aqsa are not only physical barriers but also psychological blockades aiming at inculcating such an odd reality in Palestinians’ minds and history.

The foundation hailed Jerusalemite sit-inners and acclaimed the protest parades staged within and around the mosque as the only way out to dismantle such barriers once and for all.

Along the same line, a series of orders ruling for official police protection of settler break-ins, particularly during Jewish holidays, and for the enforcement of a spatio-temporal division at al-Aqsa, was issued by the so-called Knesset Interior Committee following a hearing held on Wednesday, media manager at al-Aqsa Foundation for Endowment and Heritage, Mahmoud Abu al-Ata, said in a press release Thursday.

MK Miri Regev, chairwoman of the Knesset Interior Committee, commanded the occupation police to ensure that every Jewish settler will be able to storm the mosque and “whoop it up” in the very best circumstances.

“Muslims can be forced out of the mosque and denied access into it during the times allotted to such Jewish break-ins,” the committee added.

Al-Aqsa Foundation warned of the serious repercussions laid by the segregationist Israeli schemes to divide the mosque spatio-temporally between Jews and Muslims using military checkpoints to intensify the splitting up.

Political analysts said MK Moshe Feiglin’s condemnation of Muslims’ “Allahu Akbar” (God is the Greatest) chants as anti-Israel yells was very ironic and had no connection whatsoever to the real signification of the saying.

Abu al-Ata raised alarm bells over such instructions and called on Arabs and Muslims to take serious action against such Israeli conspiracies.