Palestinians pour into Jerusalem for Ramadan prayer
JERUSALEM: Thousands of Palestinians poured into Jerusalem to attend the first Friday prayers of Ramadan at Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, Islam’s third-holiest site, AFP correspondents reported.
Many had queued from before dawn at the Israeli checkpoints that control access to annexed east Jerusalem from the rest of the occupied West Bank.
Police reinforcements were deployed across Jerusalem’s Old City to provide security around the ultrasensitive mosque compound, which is also Judaism’s holiest site.
A spokesman for police told AFP that over 100,000 had offered the prayers on and around the mosque compound.
Israel had loosened a number of restrictions ahead of Ramadan, which began on Saturday, to enable easier travel from the West Bank to Israel for Friday prayers and family visits.
Women of all ages and men over 40 do not need entry permits in order to access Jerusalem for Friday prayers. Israel also allowed 100 men and women over the age of 55 from Gaza to enter Jerusalem for prayers, police said.
Abdeljawad Najjar, 61, from the northern West Bank city of Nablus, was among those queueing at the Qalandia Jerusalem.
Kefaya Shrideh, 40, also from Nablus, voiced the concern, shared by many Palestinians, that far-right members of Israel’s governing coalition might seek to change the longstanding rules governing the mosque compound, under which Jews can visit but not pray.
“It is important for us to pray at Al-Aqsa and not to forsake it, because we are afraid the Jews will take it,” she said. checkpoint, north of
Morocco’s king has canceled plans to attend a West Africa summit this weekend in Liberia due to the presence of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Foreign Ministry has said.
The North African country is hoping to join the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) after the African Union readmitted Morocco after a 33-year absence in January.
Mohammed VI had been due to attend the ECOWAS summit in Monrovia on Saturday and Sunday, where members are expected to discuss Morocco’s petition to join the bloc as a “full member,” the ministry said late Thursday.
But key members of ECOWAS “have decided to reduce to the minimum their level of representation at the summit because they disagree with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu being invited,” the ministry said in a statement.
The king “wishes his first visit to a ECOWAS summit not take place in a context of tension and controversy,” it said.
A teenage Palestinian girl who was shot by Israeli troops after she stabbed a soldier in the occupied West Bank died of her wounds in hospital on Friday, Israel’s military and a medical center spokeswoman said.
The girl, who Palestinian authorities said was aged 16 and from the West Bank village of Yaabed near Jenin, was shot at the entrance to the Israeli settlement of Mevo Dotan on Thursday after striking and lightly wounding a soldier with a knife, an Israeli army statement said.
A spokeswoman for the Hillel Yaffe Medical Center in central Israel said she had been treated at the hospital overnight but died of her wounds early Friday.