Hamas urges Palestinians to rally ahead of Al-Aqsa raids

Gaza rulers Hamas have urged Palestinians to rally after a series of Israeli extremist raids at Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.

The compound of the holiest mosque in the occupied East Jerusalem, which is the third most important Muslims site, has been repeatedly stormed by far-right Jewish extremists, often under Israeli security protection.

With the Jewish new year, Rosh Hashanah, beginning on Monday evening and several other religious festivals occurring in September, extremists have been encouraged to raid the compound to mark these occasions, Anadolu Agency reported on Sunday.

Mohammed Hamada, a Hamas spokesperson, urged Palestinians to guard the holy site.

"We call on our people everywhere to gather and escalate activities rejecting incursions that are guarded by occupation army and police," Hamada said.

Although the Islamic Waqf department, the organisation that administers Al-Aqsa, has slammed the storming of the mosque compound on multiple occasions, Jewish extremists have been allowed to raid it by Israeli police since 2003.

On Tuesday, Omar Al-Kiswani, the head of the mosque, told Arabi 21 that "136 extremists" had stormed the compound, including "tourists, students and members of the occupation police".

Israeli security violations against Al-Aqsa Mosque led Hamas and other Palestinian factions to launch rockets at Israel, which Tel Aviv used as the pretext for its deadly 11-day bombing campaign against the besieged Gaza Strip, which killed 256 Palestinians.

Israeli settlers storm Al-Aqsa for third day in a rowhttps://t.co/XeT0PmFzcK

— The New Arab (@The_NewArab) May 25, 2021

Another of Palestine's holy sites has also come under Israeli attack of late. The Ibrahimi Mosque, the second-most-significant place of worship for Muslims in Palestine, saw Israeli forces fire tear gas and stun grenades after Friday prayers one day in mid-August.

This happened after Palestinians were urged to attend the site in the occupied West Bank's Hebron city to prevent Israeli efforts to build, among other things, a lift exclusive to Jewish settlers there.