Israeli Occupation Soaks Ramadan with Blood, Tears of Palestinians
09/11/2002
Palestine Media Center- (PMC)
Palestinians facing what has unfortunately become the routine humiliation of the ongoing Israeli occupation on the first Friday of the holy month of Ramadan were prevented from reaching local mosques to attend the special Friday prayer.
In occupied east Jerusalem, tens of thousands of Muslims flocked peacefully to Al-Aqsa mosque compound Friday for the first weekly prayers of the holy month of Ramadan, amid tight Israeli closure and siege, which prevented hundreds of thousands living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip from attending the Friday prayer.
Some 150,000 Muslim worshipers gathered at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound while more than 2,000 Israeli police were deployed throughout the city, Israeli security sources said.
Nevertheless, the Mufti of Jerusalem and Palestine, Sheikh Ikremah Ssabri, said only 30,000 worshipers were allowed to enter the compound to attend the prayer due to Israeli roadblocks erected on the city’s entrances.
Dozens of military and police roadblocks were dispatched throughout the city as part of the Israeli restrictions adopted to prevent Palestinians from reaching Islam’s third holy site after Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia.
The road outside Jaffa Gate, one of seven entrances to Jerusalem’s Old City, was closed to traffic, while a surveillance helicopter reinforced Israeli police patrols, witnesses said.
Since the start of the Palestinian uprising, Israel has often prohibited Jerusalemites under the age of 40 from entering the compound. Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip are banned from entering the city since 1993.
Muslims fast from dawn-to-dusk during Ramadan-- one of the five pillars of Islam-- which marks the revelation of their holy book, the Koran, and is also a period of alms giving.
The current Palestinian intifada, or uprising for independence, broke out in September 2000 when Ariel Sharon, now Israel’s prime minister, entered the compound in a provocative visit, which Muslims and Arabs saw as a desecration to the holiness of Al-Aqsa.
While the ‘fortunate’ ones prayed at Al-Aqsa, Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) killed a Palestinian man in the West Bank village of Tell, as he was driving to the mosque. A passenger was also wounded in the shooting, witnesses said.
The victim, Ahmed Ramadan, 32, was killed and a passenger was wounded when troops fired on a car traveling to a mosque for the first Friday prayers of the holy month, witnesses added.
“The troops fired directly on the vehicle without warning,” Tell mayor, Adnan Aseifeh told AFP.
Earlier in the day, another person, identified as 25-year-old Radi Balawni, was killed by IOF during a raid on Tulkarem’s refugee camp.
A 13-year-old Palestinian boy was also seriously wounded in the chest Thursday when an Israeli tank opened fire on a group of young stone-throwers in Nablus, Palestinian medical sources told AFP.
The boy, identified as Rashad Yassin, was evacuated to hospital where he is being treated for severe wounds, Palestinian medical sources confirmed,
The city has been cut off into two parts, which are alternately placed under curfew.
Moreover, witnesses said Israeli armed settlers chased Palestinian olive pickers away with dogs near the West Bank city of Nablus on Friday.
The attack took place near the illegal Israeli settlement outpost of “Havat Gilad”, which IOF claimed they have dismantled earlier last month.
Israeli armed settlers have been intimidating and harassing Palestinian farmers during the month-long olive harvest, according to local and international aid workers.
In Gaza Strip, two Palestinian civilians were wounded, one of them critically, when an Israeli armored unit entered the Khan Yunis City in the southern Gaza Strip to demolish a home, belonging to the family of Ashur Brif, 25, who was shot dead Wednesday after shooting two Israeli settlers at the illegal Israeli settlement of “Rafah-Yam”.
According to foreign figures, nearly 70 Palestinian-owned houses have been razed by IOF since August. Such Israeli operations are condemned globally by human rights organizations, which described the Israeli measure as “collective punishment”.
Israeli undercover units meanwhile kidnapped a Palestinian activist, who is a member of the Islamic Jihad movement in Tulkarem, in the northern West Bank, witnesses said.
They also detained at least a dozen civilians during house searches and raids, witnesses added.
Islamic Jihad leader Abdel Nasser Sweiss was kidnapped inside his brothers’ downtown supermarket in Tulkarem by Israeli Special Forces camouflaged in civilian clothing, Palestinian witnesses added
To the south, in the village of Hussan near Bethlehem, IOF detained two Palestinian activists in their early twenties, Palestinian security officials said.
In another incident, Israeli army sources claimed IOF killed two Palestinians, one of them carrying an explosive belt, after stopping the taxi they were in, near the city of Nablus.
The two killed were said to be young men, but their identities were not immediately available.
An Israeli army spokesman said IOF detained the taxi-driver who had been wounded, and drove him to an Israeli hospital
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