Israeli occupiers storm Al-Aqsa Mosque, chant provocative slogans

Israeli occupiers stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem on Wednesday morning, chanting provocative songs and slogans inside its courtyards, the Jerusalem Governorate said.

The governorate published video footage showing occupiers inside the mosque compound during the incursion.

Since 2003, Israeli police have allowed Israeli occupiers to enter the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound daily, except on Fridays and Saturdays.

According to a report released Sunday by the Palestinian Ministry of Awqaf and Religious Affairs, Israeli forces carried out 26 incursions into the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in June.

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Palestinians said Israel had intensified efforts for decades to Judaize East Jerusalem, including Al-Aqsa Mosque, and erase the city’s Arab and Islamic identity.

Earlier on Tuesday, Israeli Knesset member Tzvi Sukkot stormed an orphan school in the Old City of occupied East Jerusalem, broke a sign bearing the school’s name and the Palestinian flag, and threatened to close it along with other Palestinian educational institutions in the city.

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Sukkot, a member of the far-right Religious Zionism party, posted a video showing him storming the school and breaking the sign.

“A school belonging to the Palestinian Authority cannot continue to exist inside territory under Israeli sovereignty,” he said.

Sukkot, who chairs the Knesset Education Committee, added: “We will close this school and all similar educational institutions in Jerusalem.”

Arab Knesset member Ayman Odeh condemned the raid, calling it an attack on a Palestinian educational institution.

“How is it acceptable that the chair of the Knesset’s Education Committee breaks into a school in East Jerusalem and vandalises it just because there’s a Palestinian flag there?” Odeh wrote on X.

“Imagine if the chair of the Education Committee in any other country entered a Jewish school and vandalised it just because an Israeli flag was being flown there. The entire world would be horrified. And rightly so!” he added.

“A school is a place where children are supposed to learn and grow, not an arena for rampages by politicians and hilltop youth in the throes of a campaign crisis,” Odeh said.

About 390,000 Palestinians live in occupied East Jerusalem, where the vast majority of schools continue to teach the Palestinian curriculum despite increasing Israeli pressure, particularly under Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, to impose the Israeli curriculum on Palestinian schools.

In recent weeks, Sukkot has carried out visits and raids on several Arab schools inside Israel, saying they were aimed at monitoring curricula. The moves drew protests from parents who accused him of incitement and of seeking to target Arab education.

The school raid came amid escalating attacks by Israel’s far right against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem ahead of Israel’s general election scheduled for Oct. 27.

Palestinians seek East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state, citing international resolutions that do not recognise Israel’s occupation of the city in 1967 or its annexation in 1980.