Renewed clashes at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque

The Israeli police and Palestinians clashed at the holy site in Jerusalem’s Old City, known to Jews as the Temple Mount and known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary.

The Palestinian news agency Ma’an told a different story reporting that Israeli forces “stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound shortly after dawn prayer, firing rubber-coated steel bullets and stun grenades, leading to the injury of several worshipers”.

As they had the day before, Israeli security forces entered the compound early on Monday to prevent Muslim youths from harassing visiting Jews, police said.

Mahmud Abbas the Palestinian President condemned what he said was an attack by Israeli police at the site, while Gilad Erdan the Public Security Minister from Israel said the Muslim rioters made the complex into a battlefield.

As said by the police spokeswoman Luba Samri, at the entrance to the mosque, suspected pipe bombs had been found.

Police reportedly entered the compound where clashes ensued with Palestinians.

A general view of the Dome of the Rock in the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Israel seized East Jerusalem, the place Al-Aqsa is situated, within the Six Day Conflict of 1967 and later annexed it in a transfer by no means recognised by the worldwide group.

“They are chasing us with (stun) grenades and it’s been like that since the morning”.

“We are anxious about Al Aqsa because Israel wants to empty it and then all occupied Jerusalem of the Muslims”, Sanaa Rajabi, among dozens of women protesting outside the gates of the Al-Aqsa compound said. He added that two Arabs “involved in stone throwing incidents” were arrested.

The compound in its current form was built in the seventh century by Islam’s second caliph, Omar, on the site of the Second Jewish Temple that was destroyed by the Romans around 70 AD.

The clashes came with tensions running high after Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon last week outlawed two Muslim groups that confront Jewish visitors to the compound.

Palestinians have accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of supporting claims by Jewish ultranationalists seeking access to the site.

Israeli police said a auto in south Jerusalem late on Sunday lost control as it passed by the Palestinian district of Sur Baher and hit an electricity pole, fatally injuring the driver, a 65-year-old Jewish man.

It is the country’s duty and right to act against rioters in order to enable freedom of religious practice in this holy place.