HEBRON: Israeli occupation forces Monday closed the Ibrahimi Mosque to worshipers, under the pretext of Jewish holidays.

The Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs said that the closure of the mosque comes within the framework of the temporal and spatial division, which has permanently stolen about 36% of its corridors.

The Endowments explained that Israel closes the mosque for 10 days a year completely, under the pretext of Jewish holidays, and deprives Palestinian worshipers of their right to worship, disregarding the feelings of Muslims and their right to worship freely and safely in their mosques and places of worship in front of the entire world.

It considered the closure a blatant violation of the sanctity of the mosque and a provocative assault on the right of Muslims to access their places of worship.

Last July, the occupation authorities prevented the call to prayer 43 times in the Ibrahimi Mosque, as part of their repeated attempts to impose temporal and spatial division on it.

In a dange
rous move, the occupation forces covered the exposed part of the Ibrahimi Mosque courtyard located in the usurped section, which is considered the only outlet for the mosque and the Ishaqiya prayer hall, on July 11, 2024.

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, practice the most heinous forms of abuse at the occupation checkpoints that cut off the occupied Palestinian territories, and occasions to intensify the storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron by extremist Jewish groups.

Source: Palestine News and Information Agency – WAFA