Israeli forces today closed the Ibrahimi Mosque to Muslim worshippers for 24 hours, in preparation for a Jewish settlers raid to mark a Jewish holiday, said a Waqf official.
Director of the Hebron Waqf Directorate’s Public Relations Department Raed Maswadeh told WAFA that Israeli soldiers closed the mosque to Muslim worshipers, while they allowed Jewish settlers to access it.
Maswadeh added that the settlers also set up tents just outside the mosque.
Today is the 25th anniversary of the Ibrahimi mosque massacre, 29 Palestiniand were sloughtered, 125 injured, by The Israeli #kahanist Baruch Goldstein, Shuhada Street closed, Hebron became devided, segregated and a ghost town. pic.twitter.com/TF1kHReAvP
— Issa Amro عيسى عمرو ?? (@Issaamro) February 25, 2019
Al-Ibrahimi Mosque is located in the old city of Hebron (Al-Khalil), few hundred meters away from the part of the city illegally occupied by around 400 extremist settlers, who are protected by about 1,500 Israeli soldiers.
Since 1967, al-Ibrahimi Mosque, like all other Muslim holy sites in Palestine, became a target for the Israeli occupying forces and Zionist settlers, reported the Hebron Rehabilitation Committee.
In 1994, Israel divided al-Ibrahimi Mosque between Muslims and Jews, after a Jewish settler gunned down 30 Palestinians during dawn prayer.
A heavily armed group of Israeli settlers threatened to kill Palestinian civilians in the occupied West Bank yesterday, and on the anniversary of the Hebron mosque massacre, which left 29 Palestinians dead at the hands of American Israeli Baruch Goldstein.
via Quds News. pic.twitter.com/zPJdl7QPef
— CJ Werleman (@cjwerleman) February 26, 2019
Nowadays, Israel controls Palestinians’ access to the Mosque, prevents many from praying there on a regular basis and frequently bans the call for prayer under the pretext of disturbing the settlers.
Israel has expelled the only international monitors protecting Hebron’s Palestinians from 800 heavily guarded settlers, one of whom committed the 1994 massacre that triggered their deployment.
(Wafa, PC, Social Media)
