HEBRON: The Israeli occupation Wednesday authorities closed the Ibrahimi Mosque in the city of Hebron to Muslim worshipers until Saturday evening.
The director of the mosque and its head custodian Moataz Abu Sneineh told WAFA that the occupation authorities closed the Ibrahimi Mosque today to Muslims to allow colonists to celebrate one of their holidays, noting that the closure process includes closing the main gates of the mosque and preventing all employees of al-Awqaf from being inside it.
He added that the occupation forces are turning all neighborhoods of the Old City, the surroundings of the Ibrahimi Mosque, and the neighboring neighborhoods into military barracks, and are intensively deploying their soldiers on various main axes in the area, while allowing hundreds of colonists to come to the mosque, describing the behavior of the occupation government as racist, and an infringement on the freedom of worship and the performance of religious rituals and prayers for Muslims who have the right to this p
urely Islamic mosque.
In turn, the Director General of the General Administration of Endowments in Hebron Hajj Ghassan Al-Rajabi spoke about the ongoing attacks on the Ibrahimi Mosque and the prevention of the dawn call to prayer for the 27th consecutive day and the decision to close it starting today, so that closing the mosque for four consecutive days has become an unprecedented reality, and falls within the unprecedented encroachment that Muslim Palestinian holy sites are exposed to.
Ahmed Al-Tamimi, a member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, considered what the Israel is doing a blatant violation of places of worship and the privacy of the Ibrahimi Mosque.
The Israeli occupation authorities turn Jewish holidays into stations for escalating their arbitrary and repressive measures and procedures to restrict the lives of Palestinian citizens, paralyze their movement and prevent them from moving, strike the pillars of the economy and sources of livelihood for citizens, a
nd practice the ugliest forms of abuse at the occupation military checkpoints that cut off the occupied Palestinian land. They also turn such holidays into occasions to intensify the storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron by extremist Jewish groups.
Source: Palestine news & Information Agency – WAFA