Eid al-Fitr ‘The saddest day for Muslim worshippers in Jerusalem’: al-Aqsa mosque closed at Eid Palestinians say the move is part of a wider Israeli strategy to leverage security tensions to tighten restrictions Lorenzo Tondo in Jerusalem and Seham Tantesh in Gaza The Guardian: 20 Mar 2026 A six-decade agreement governing Muslim and Jewish prayer at Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site has “collapsed” under pressure from Jewish extremists backed by the Israeli government, experts have warned. A series of arrests of Muslim caretaker staff, bans on access for hundreds of Muslims, and escalating incursions by radical Jewish groups culminated this week in the arrest of an imam of al-Aqsa mosque and an Israeli police raid during evening prayers on the first night of Ramadan. The actions by the Jerusalem police and the Shin Bet internal security force, both now under far-right leadership, represent a rupture in the status quo agreement dating back to the aftermath of the 1967 war, which stipulates that only Muslims are permitted to pray in the sacred compound around the mosque, known as the al-Haram al-Sharif to Muslims, which also encompasses the seventh-century Dome of the Rock shrine. To Jews it is the Temple Mount, the site of the 10th-century BC first temple and second temple, which was destroyed by the Romans in AD70. Because of security concerns related to the US-Israeli war on Iran, on 28 February Israeli authorities had in effect sealed off the mosque complex in Jerusalem to most Muslim worshippers during Ramadan. Officials framed the move as a security measure linked to the escalating confrontation with Iran, leaving thousands of Palestinians to gather and pray outside the gates of the Old City instead. The al-Aqsa mosque was built in AD 611 and can accommodate 3,000 worshippers. It sits on the same axis as Dome of the Rock, a commemorative Islamic monument. Al-Aqsa was captured by the Crusaders in 1099 and the mosque was used as a palace; it was also the headquarters of the religious order of the Knights Templar. The wooden beams and panels are Lebanese cedar and cypress. It isthe second most holy site, after Mecca, in Islam.
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