Within hours of the launch of the US-Israeli assault on Iran last weekend, both the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron and Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem were shut down. Israeli occupation forces expelled worshippers and justified the closures under the pretext of wartime “preventive measures”.
There are no bomb shelters in Palestinian homes in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, nor are there public shelters. Among Palestinians in 1948 territories, around half of the population has no place to seek refuge from air attacks, according to figures from Israel’s own state comptroller.
Preventing worshippers from reaching the mosques, and instead confining them to their homes, markets, streets or workplaces, does not make them any safer. Amid the genocidal war in Gaza, the idea that Israeli authorities are concerned for the safety of any Palestinian is not merely laughable; it is stomach-turning.
The targeting of mosques through such measures stems, rather, from a vision of religious replacement espoused by Israel’s Zionist government and the Zionist right more broadly. Religious Zionists, who have become the dominant current in Israeli society, call the Al-Aqsa complex Temple Mount.
Adherents performs a mental act of erasure upon hearing this term. The same applies to the Ibrahimi Mosque, which the Zionist right regards as the Cave of the Patriarchs.
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