After closing the Ibrahimi Mosque to Palestinian worshippers, the Israeli army permitted thousands of illegal settlers to hold a concert and perform rituals at the site in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron.
A video shared on social media shows Israeli soldiers allowing settlers to bring musical instruments into the Mosque. The footage, likely recorded by an Israeli settler or soldier, also depicts soldiers assisting in carrying materials into the place of worship.
Moataz Abu Sneineh, the Mosque director, condemned the settlers’ actions, stating that they held a concert in the Mosque’s courtyards, describing it as “a blatant violation of the sanctity of the place and the privacy of Muslims.”
“These actions and violations are part of a coordinated effort between the occupation forces and the settlers, who were allowed to bring in musical instruments and loudspeakers to assert control over the mosque and its surroundings. Meanwhile, Palestinians are denied the ability to bring necessary supplies for the Mosque’s maintenance and restoration,” he told the official news agency Wafa.
According to Wafa, the Mosque was reopened to Palestinian worshippers early on Tuesday.
The Ibrahimi Mosque holds significant importance for Muslims, who believe it is built above the tomb of Prophet Ibrahim (Abraham). Following the 1994 massacre of 29 Palestinian worshippers by Jewish extremist settler Baruch Goldstein inside the Mosque, Israeli authorities divided the Mosque’s complex between Muslim and Jewish worshippers.
In July 2017, the UNESCO World Heritage Committee included the Ibrahimi Mosque and the old city of Hebron on its World Heritage List.
Hebron is home to around 220,000 Palestinians and about 500 illegal Israeli settlers, who reside in Jewish-only enclaves heavily guarded by Israeli troops. Tensions have been high across the occupied West Bank amid a deadly Israeli offensive that has killed nearly 40,800 people in Gaza since October 7 of the previous year.
Since then, at least 682 people have been killed and over 5,700 injured by Israeli fire in the occupied territory, according to Palestinian sources.
In a landmark opinion on July 19, the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s decades-long occupation of Palestinian land “illegal” and called for the evacuation of all existing settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
I am an experienced writer, analyst, and author. My exposure in English journalism spans more than 28 years. In the past, I have been working with daily The Muslim (Lahore Bureau), daily Business Recorder (Lahore/Islamabad Bureaus), Daily Times, Islamabad, daily The Nation (Lahore and Karachi). With daily The Nation, I have served as Resident Editor, Karachi. Since 2009, I have been working as a Freelance Writer/Editor for American organizations.
