PALESTINE/ By ordering a brutal attack against Palestinian worshippers inside Al-Aqsa Mosque on the 14th day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan; Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knew very well that the Palestinian men and women would retaliate. Netanyahu’s motive should be obvious. He wanted to divert attention from the mass protests that have rocked Israel since January. These protests had divided Israeli society along ideological and political lines in ways never witnessed before.

History has proven that Israeli attacks on Palestinian holy places are guaranteed to provoke a Palestinian response. For Netanyahu the price of Palestinian retaliation was worth the political gains from uniting Israelis of all political backgrounds behind them. Ben-Gvir, in particular, knew that an attack on Al-Aqsa would reassure his far-right religious constituency about his commitment to imposing full Israeli Jewish sovereignty over Palestinian Muslim and Christian holy places in the occupied city of Jerusalem.

What Netanyahu and his allies may have not anticipated, however, is the intensity of the Palestinian response. Hundreds of rockets were fired toward the north and south of Israel. These came not only from the besieged Gaza Strip but, even more strategically important, also from South Lebanon.

Although some damage was reported, the rocket response was a political game-changer. This was the first time in years that fighters in two Arab countries coordinated their retaliatory action against Israel and hit back simultaneously.

Details on the Recent Attack in Palestine

Bakr Owais, a 24-year-old student at Birzeit University, was also at the mosque that night for a Ramadan i’tikaf and, along with the other worshippers 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 worshippers that they had to leave the mosque or else they would be removed by force.

At that point, the youth present in the mosque decided to resist as they did not want their i’tikaf interrupted for the sake of clearing the compound for settler visits the next morning. The security forces decided to move in.

“They broke the windows of the mosque and started throwing stun grenades at us. There were young children, elderly men, and women stuck inside,” Owais said.

“Another group came through a door and started firing tear gas, stun grenades, and rubber-coated bullets at the people.

“They attacked the people, beating them on the head with sticks … people fainted, people suffocated, people were bleeding. Then they started arresting us. Huge numbers of people were taken. They kept swearing at us the whole time, pushing us onto buses that took us to the police station in Atarot where we were made to lie on the floor with our hands cuffed behind us.

“There must have been 400, 500 detainees. They took our names, then put a sticker on us with our name and number and called us in by the number, like we were worthless,” he said.

Owais, along with every other Palestinian arrested during the raid, has been banned from entering Al-Aqsa for a week.

Final Word

The crimes and oppression of the Israeli regime against innocent women and children has never decreased or stopped; but hopefully and end would be put to the life of this cancerous tumor for humanity.

Source; Al-Jazeera & Middle East Monitor