occupy East Jerusalem – The city of Jerusalem remains tense in the wake of overnight raids by Israeli forces on Palestinian Muslim worshipers who were at the Al-Aqsa Mosque after nightly tarawih prayers.
International efforts are being made to mediate between Palestinian groups and the Israeli government to ease tensions after the latter received a barrage of condemnations for the actions of its armed forces.
The raids continued into the morning, with footage circulating of Israeli soldiers dragging and beating worshipers to force them out of the mosque shortly before the compound, known as al-Haram al-Sharif to Muslims, opened for non-Muslim visitors.
Al-Haram al-Sharif is home to Islam’s third holiest site, the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, where the Prophet Muhammad is believed to have ascended to heaven. Jews call the compound Temple Mount and believe the Biblical Jewish temples once stood there. Although mainstream Judaism prohibits praying at the site, the compound has been a source of tension for decades.
Al Jazeera spoke to some Palestinian believers who were in the mosque about their experience and why it was particularly painful to remove them from the mosque during the holy month of Ramadan.
‘Violation of our holy places’
Part of Islamic worship is the act of “itikaf” – when worshipers shut themselves off from the world and spend a long period of time in prayer and contemplation. This period can be consecutive days.
Many observant Muslims believe that itikaf is particularly blessed during Ramadan, with the prophetic tradition saying that 10 days is the ideal length of an itikaf during the holy month.
For Palestinian Muslims, the Al-Aqsa Mosque is a beloved icon of their faith. For Palestinian Muslims in Jerusalem, it is also the only place they choose to worship during Ramadan.
“Itikaf is part of Ramadan. I am in Al-Aqsa every day during Ramadan – and many nights,” 29-year-old Amir Maragha from the Silwad neighborhood of Jerusalem told Al Jazeera.
“When there are many worshipers at Al-Aqsa, the raids decrease. Some people stay in the mosque to prevent the raids,” he said.
In a statement issued after the raid, Israeli police claimed they were “forced” to enter the compound when “masked agitators” armed with fireworks, sticks and stones locked themselves inside the mosque.
“When the police entered, stones were thrown at them and fireworks were fired from the mosque by a large group of agitators,” the statement said.
“Police always attack brutally to prevent people from staying in the mosque,” Maragha said. “The next day it is safe for the settlers to make their incursions into the settlements without anyone standing in their way.”
‘People fainted, suffocated, bled’
Bakr Owais, a 24-year-old student at Birzeit University, was also at the mosque that evening for a Ramadan itikaf and, along with the other believers there, was surprised when the doors were sealed with everyone inside.
The security forces stood on the roof of the mosque and used a loudspeaker to tell the worshipers to leave the mosque or they would be forcibly removed.
At that point, the youths present in the mosque decided to resist, as they did not want their itikaf interrupted to clear the compound for settler visits the following morning. The security forces decided to withdraw.
“They broke the windows of the mosque and started throwing stun grenades at us. There were young children, elderly men and women trapped,” Owais told Al Jazeera.
“Another group came through a door and started firing tear gas, stun grenades and rubber-coated bullets at the people.
“They attacked the people, hit them on the head with sticks… people passed out, people suffocated, people bled. Then they started arresting us. Huge numbers of people were taken. They kept berating us all the time and shoved us into buses that took us to the police station in Atarot, where we had to lie on the ground with our hands handcuffed behind us.
“There must have been 400, 500 detainees. They wrote down our names, then put a sticker on us with our name and number and called us by the number, like we were worthless,” he said.
Owais, like all other Palestinians arrested during the raid, was banned from Al-Aqsa for a week.