JERUSALEM: Tens of thousands of Palestinians prayed at the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem on Friday, the first weekly prayers of the Muslim holy month of Ramadhan. Around 120,000 people attended the Friday prayers, a spokesman for the religious authority that governs the mosque said.
Heavily armed Israeli police stood guard in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City.
Al Aqsa is the third holiest site for Muslims, after two others in Saudi Arabia. It is located in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem.
Thousands of Palestinians from the West Bank were allowed to enter Jerusalem for the prayers, passing through checkpoints where they underwent searches.
There were no restrictions on women crossing into Jerusalem, but men under 40 were prevented from crossing by Israel, which normally cites security concerns.
Friday prayers passed peacefully at the Al Aqsa Mosque, while outside the compound heavily armed police officers were deployed in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City.
MUSLIM UNITY URGED
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday urged the Islamic world to show greater unity in supporting the Palestinians, saying Muslim leaders had failed to overcome divisions to oppose Israel’s “tyranny”.
Erdogan addressed thousands in Istanbul at a rally he personally called, hours ahead of an emergency meeting of Islamic leaders he is also hosting over the killing of Gaza protesters.
The Turkish strongman has reacted with unbridled fury to the killing by Israeli forces on Monday of some 60 Palestinians on the Gaza border as well as the move of the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
“The time has come to stand against Israel’s tyranny,” Erdogan told a sea of protesters waving Turkish and Palestinian flags. “I invite all Muslims and all humanity to take action... against those who drag our region and the world into catastrophe with their fanaticism,” he added.
Erdogan is hoping the extraordinary meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) will be able to bridge divisions in the Islamic world to take a strong stance against Israel.
This is the second emergency OIC meeting Erdogan has hosted in the space of half a year after the December 2017 summit, also in Istanbul, that denounced US President Donald Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
A draft summit communique calls for “international protection for the Palestinian people” and condemns Israel’s “criminal” actions against “unarmed civilians”.
The text also accuses the US administration of “encouraging the crimes of Israel”, according to participants in the summit.
— AFP
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