Jerusalem: night of violence on the esplanade of the Mosques

The Esplanade of the Mosques, in the Old City of Jerusalem, finds itself once again at the heart of all the tensions.

During the night from Tuesday to Wednesday, clashes opposed Muslim worshipers to the Israeli police, which maintains order in the eastern part of the city, occupied since 1967. In a particularly inflammable context, this violence is fear a new explosion in the region.

The events of the night had been feared for several days because, this year again, the Jewish and Muslim calendars want the Passover holiday, the Jewish Passover, to fall during the month of Ramadan.

The Esplanade des Mosques, which is also the Temple Mount in Jewish eyes, is under a status quo regime under which only Muslims are allowed to pray there.

The site is accessible to non-Muslims, but in a limited way.

For some Jews, this is an unacceptable situation, especially during Passover.

But in the eyes of Muslims, any questioning of the status quo would be a casus belli.

What exactly happened on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday?

According to the Waqf, the administration in charge of the holy place, the faithful had come to pray there all night, a tradition during Ramadan.

But, according to the Israeli police,

.

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In a statement, the police say they negotiated after evening prayers for them to agree to leave the premises but without success, which led him to enter the mosque where "she was

.

She specifies that

.

A statement issued Wednesday by the Prime Minister's Office refers to the testimony of a young Palestinian who says he was locked in the mosque by masked men.

Very early Wednesday morning, other videos, relayed on social networks, illustrated the violence of the clashes.

Some showed the devastated places after the police operation.

In the aftermath, 16 rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli army responded with shelling and tank fire at suspected Hamas weapons depots.

No casualties were reported in either camp.

In the early morning, in Silwan, a neighborhood in East Jerusalem, a teenager who threw Molotov cocktails at the police was injured.

A little later, the Israeli army reported clashes in a West Bank town and an attack on Checkpoint 300, which controls the crossings between Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

Play the appeasement

These events come as the outbursts of violence have multiplied in recent days.

Last Friday, in Jerusalem's Old City, Israeli police shot and killed a young man in conditions that remain unclear.

On Tuesday, two Israeli soldiers were injured in a stabbing attack near a military camp inside Israel's borders.

The army also expressed concern about the interception, Sunday in the Golan, of a drone from Syria.

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Could another night of violence on the esplanade of the Mosques be the spark too many?

From Gaza, Hamas is both threatening in its words and relatively moderate in its reaction.

, launched the Islamist movement again on Wednesday morning.

In Ramallah, the spokesman for Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, for his part

(Israel, editor’s note)

.

At the call of Jordan, whose king is guardian of the Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem, the Arab League met on Wednesday.

In a statement, she said

For its part, Israel tries to play the appeasement.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu issued a statement on Wednesday saying that

. "

Wednesday afternoon, Jerusalem was quiet but its streets empty.

,” ​​confided a shopkeeper who, like all the inhabitants of the Old City, remembers that, in May 2021, similar events led to a war.