RAMALLAH, March 9, 2018 (WAFA) – President Mahmoud Abbas‘ advisor on religious affairs, Mahmoud al-Habbash, Friday condemned Israeli settlers’ erection of tents in the yards of the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron earlier today.

Al-Habbash said in a statement that Israel, the occupying power, continues to violate all international conventions and treaties and the resolutions of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which confirmed that the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron is a pure Islamic heritage.

Al-Habbash said these fascist attempts carried out by groups of Israel’s terrorist settlers in the Old City of Hebron would not have been possible without the full support of the Israeli occupation government, which he stressed, practices a systematic state terrorism against the Palestinian people and their Muslim and Christian holy sites.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian government spokesman Yousef al-Mahmoud warned of the dangerous repercussions of such continued attacks against holy sites in Palestine, slamming it as a blatant violation of religious rituals.

He reiterated the call for the international community and international organizations and bodies to reject and condemn the Israeli occupation’s attacks on holy sites in occupied Palestine, urging to implement all relevant laws to ensure the protection of holy sites.

Al-Ibrahimi Mosque is located in the old city of Hebron, few hundred meters away from the part of the city illegally occupied by hundreds of Israeli settlers, who are protected by about Israeli soldiers.

Since 1967, al-Ibrahimi Mosque, like all other Muslim holy sites in Palestine, became a target for the Israeli occupying forces and settlers.

In 1994, Israel divided al-Ibrahimi Mosque between Muslims and Jews, after an Israeli settler gunned down 29 Palestinian worshipers during dawn prayer during the last days of Ramadan.

The mosque is considered to be the fourth most important religious site in Islam (after Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem), and the second holiest place after the Aqsa Mosque in Palestine.

T.R.