JERUSALEM,
December 18, 2014 (WAFA) – At least three Palestinians, including a woman, were
Thursday arrested by Israeli police in al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem,
following a provocative tour by Jewish fanatics in the Islamic holy site,
according to WAFA correspondent.
Latifa
Abdel-Latif, Abdal-Afu Zeghair, and Tamer Shala’ta were arrested by the police
after the three attempted to fend off a provocative visit by Jewish extremists
to al-Aqsa compound. They were led to a nearby police station.
Prior
to the arrest, around 30 Jewish fanatics, under heavy police protection, broke
into Al-Aqsa yards and verbally assaulted female worshipers inside the
compound.
The
Palestinian woman, Latifa, was verbally harassed while protesting outside the
Mosque’s compound, against an Israeli order temporarily denying her entry to
the Mosque.
Daily
provocative tours by Jewish settlers to al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest place
in Islam, are one of the main drives behind recurrent clashes between young
Jerusalemites and Israeli police.
On
Wednesday, a Jewish settler who provocatively visited the compound, along with
many other fanatics, shouted anti-Islam slogans and insulted Prophet Mohammad,
an act strictly prohibited by Muslims.
Hundreds
of Palestinians, including children, were arrested in the occupied East
Jerusalem during an Israeli crackdown that targeted Palestinian activists who
engaged in protests against Jewish fanatics’ provocative visits to al-Aqsa.
According
to Palestinian prisoners’ rights group Addameer, between June and September
2014 alone, at least 26 children were ordered to remain under house arrest for
periods ranging between one and three weeks. Most were in their mid-teens, but
the youngest child was just 12 years old.
Member
of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO),
Ahmad Queri, strongly condemned the Israeli assault and warned that such
escalation against Jerusalem and al-Aqsa Mosque could lead to a “blast” in the status
quo and drag the city into a cycle of violence.
On
October 8, President Mahmoud Abbas warned the Israeli government against turning
the current political conflict into a religious one.
“Every
day, we see those [Jewish extremists] attempting to enter al-Aqsa by all means
so as to compel [Palestinians] to accept what they want as a de facto status;
to impose the temporal and spatial division of the Mosque, under the pretext
that they have [rights] in it,” Abbas was since quoted.
M.N
