Young Palestinians threw stones at Israeli police. An AFP journalist reported “some injuries”.
On Friday, April 22, fresh clashes broke out between Israeli police and Palestinian protesters on the mosque esplanade in Jerusalem, an AFP photographer at the scene noted.
Also readIn Jerusalem, at the heart of the clashes on the Esplanade of Mosques
Early Friday morning, Israeli police forces entered the Esplanade, Islam’s third holiest site and Judaism’s holiest site like the Temple Mount, and Palestinian youths threw stones at them, noted this journalist, who reported some injuries. Around 4 a.m., people there threw stones at the Wailing Wall, Judaism’s holiest place of worship, which sits below the Esplanade of Mosques in Jerusalem’s Old City, Israeli police said.
The situation on the Esplanade remained tense this third Friday of the holy month of Ramadan – which coincides with the end of Passover celebrations, the Jewish Passover – after stones were thrown and rubber bullets fired.
More than 200 injured in one week
Over the past week, more than 200 people, mostly Palestinians, have been injured in clashes in and around the Al-Aqsa Mosques, which have also led to rocket fire from armed Palestinian groups heading from the Gaza Strip towards Israel and Israeli retaliatory strikes by 2,3 in that Palestinian enclave million inhabitants.
The presence of many Jews during Ramadan — who can visit the site under certain conditions and times without praying there, according to the current status quo — and the deployment of police forces at the site were widely perceived by Palestinians and several countries in the region as Gesture of “provocation”.
Several Arab ministers gathered in Amman, Jordan, therefore condemned “the Israeli attacks and assaults on the worshipers of Al-Aqsa Mosque,” a site administered by Jordan but access to which is controlled by the Jewish state.