Arab League Condemns Infiltration of Hundreds of Settlers into Al-Aqsa Mosque

Cairo, January 10 (KUNA) – The Arab League on Thursday strongly condemned the incursion of more than 1,300 settlers into the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, denouncing the ongoing escalation policy pursued by Israeli occupation forces in the occupied city of Jerusalem. In a statement issued on Thursday, the League said that these incursions were accompanied by public performance of Talmudic rituals and prayers within the mosque’s courtyards, protected by occupation forces, alongside restrictions on Palestinian worshippers and obstruction of their access to the site. It added that the widening scope and recurrence of the incursions, along with accompanying practices aimed at imposing religious rituals inside the mosque, constitute a blatant violation of its sanctity and an organized attempt to alter the historical and legal status quo there, paving the way for its temporal and spatial division. The League placed full responsibility for this escalation and its repercussions on regional security and stability on the Israeli occupation forces, expressing its rejection of provocative statements by the occupation’s Minister of Public Security regarding occupied Jerusalem. It affirmed that the occupation’s claims of sovereignty over the city and its holy sites do not change its legal status as occupied territory, nor do they diminish the firm Palestinian rights therein. It noted that the coincidence of such statements with the surge in incursions reflects a trend toward imposing control over the holy sites and undermining the established historical and legal status quo. The League called on the international community and the Security Council to take practical and urgent measures to halt these violations, ensure freedom of worship and access for worshippers to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, protect the holy sites, and hold those responsible for the violations accountable, moving beyond condemnatory statements to effective action that prevents their continuation. It reaffirmed the League’s steadfast position supporting the resilience of the Palestinian people in occupied Jerusalem and rejecting all attempts to alter the city’s Arab-Palestinian character, emphasizing that East Jerusalem is an inseparable part of the Palestinian territory occupied in 1967 and the capital of the State of Palestine. (End) M.M. / F.S.