Escalation at Al-Aqsa Mosque – Hamas warns of a potential ‘religious war’
The first evening prayer of Ramadan at Al-Aqsa Mosque, 10 March 2024
The Palestine Chronicle reports on 28 August 2024:
“The occupation government’s decision to fund Zionist tours of Al-Aqsa Mosque is a dangerous escalation and playing with fire, leading the region towards a religious war for which the occupation and its supporters will bear responsibility,” Hamas said in a statement.
The resistance movement called on Palestinians to “mobilize, rally, and stand in solidarity in defense of our people and our sanctities, in the face of the fascist occupation government’s escalation of all forms of systematic targeting and implementation of its Zionist agendas and plans against the sanctity, status, and identity of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque.”
It also appealed to the masses in the Arab, Islamic world and the free people of the globe to protest against Israel’s crimes and aggressions against the Palestinian people, and their land, and their Islamic and Christian holy places, and “to stand with our people’s just cause for freedom, independence, self-determination, and an end to the occupation,” per the statement.
Hamas stressed that the latest unprecedented move of funding tours in Al-Aqsa Mosque comes in line with previous ones and conforms with the Zionist agenda and plans to “desecrate and Judaize” the holy place.
Hamas stated that Israel and all its supporters namely the United States administration “bear full responsibility” for this dangerous and escalatory step. “The frantic and accelerated attempts by the Zionist occupation to change the status quo at the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque will not succeed in erasing or obscuring the facts of reality and history—that it is an Islamic endowment that does not accept division. It was and will remain purely Islamic, and we will not accept any (other’s) sovereignty or legitimacy over any part of it, no matter the costs and sacrifices,” the statement read.