“Israel seeks, through what is happening in Al-Aqsa Mosque, to drag the region into a religious war,” the leader of the Arab Joint List in the Israeli Knesset Ayman Odeh warned.
Odeh told Turkey’s Anadolu Agency: “What is happening in Al-Aqsa Mosque today and previous Israeli procedures during the past three months is an extremely serious development that has never been at this level since 1967.”
“We are seeing terrifying images now inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque where the Israeli Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel leads intrusions while his government supports this dangerous trend, in addition to the launch of stun grenades and tear gas inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the partitioning schemes,” Odeh said.
He stressed that this tension in Al-Aqsa and the desecration of Islamic and Christian sanctities “will drag us to very serious waves of violence”.
“Therefore we went to the Israeli government several times demanding a stop to this madness on the ground,” he added. Odeh explained that the solution is to liberate Jerusalem from the Israeli occupation, and stop all manifestations of this occupation.
Clashes erupted yesterday after a number of Israeli soldiers entered the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem using tear gas and stun grenades to arrest what they called Palestinian “stone throwers”.
The incursions come on the occasion of the Jewish New Year, where celebrations last for two days.