Israel has passed one of its most dangerous decisions that it made against the holy places since the Palestinian Nakba in 1948 in the midst of the major events that are currently going through the region, as the Netanyahu government announced in the middle of July the abolition of the powers of the Ibrahimi Mosque administration from the Palestinian Ministry of Endowments and the Hebron Municipality and transferred it to the religious council of the Kiryat four settlement.
This announcement comes as a culmination of a long operation of the gradual control of the Ibrahimi Mosque, which Israel started since the occupation in 1967, although it is considered the Hebron region at that time under military occupation and not annexing it to the state’s lands, as it did in Jerusalem, Israel excluded at that time the Ibrahimi Mosque from the military measures that applied to other mosques in the West Bank areas, which were trying to move away from any Attempts to attack her for fear of Palestinian reactions.
In the case of the Ibrahimi Mosque, the rabbi of the Israeli army, “Shlomo Gourane” was the first to storm the Ibrahimi Mosque on the eve of the occupation, closed its gates and established its prayers, registered a precedent with the occupation government in dealing with the Ibrahimi Mosque, where it announced that the Jews had special rights in this mosque as the burial site of Ibrahim Al -Khalil, Isaac and Jacob, peace and blessings be upon them.
Therefore, at the time the Israeli army, the civil administration of the Israeli army, insisted on granting the Ibrahimi Mosque a special situation that allows the Jews to pray inside it in specific sacred days in the Jewish religion, and then captured it to become specific times every day, which we call today “temporal division.”
Although the Palestinians rejected these measures and their resistance, the Israeli pressure, and the absence of the official Arab and Islamic reaction, facilitated the mission of the occupation in adapting the region, and turning Israeli measures into a fait accompli.
Thus, the Brahimi Mosque applied with time the idea of division in time between Muslims and Jews, where certain hours were determined to enter the Jews, and another for Muslims, with the allocation of certain days of Jewish holidays in which the Ibrahimi Mosque is completely Jewish.
The incident of the massacre of the Ibrahimi Mosque comes at the dawn of 15 Ramadan, February 25, 1994, in which 29 Palestinians were killed by the terrorist Baruch Goldstein, and announced the beginning of a new era in the Ibrahimi Mosque, where the Israeli Committee of Shamghar reached six months after the mosque was closed to study the massacre and its events into a solution to divide the Ibrahimi Mosque between Muslims and Jews after 27 years of preparing for this step, and thus rewarded the aggressor committee instead of permanently preventing him from entering the place.
This process followed the expansion of control of the mosque slowly during the full 16 years, in which the Ibrahimi Mosque was used by the settlers much more than what Muslims who were deprived of entering it with flimsy security arguments, and sometimes months.
Until the appropriate time came to take another big step on February 21, 2010, and announces the registration of the Ibrahimi Mosque on the list of Jewish heritage, so that it legally turned it into a synagogue that allows Muslims to pray in it, after it was a mosque that allowed the Jews to pray in it.
However, the mosque administration remained practically in the hands of the Palestinian Ministry of Endowments during all of that period over about 58 years of occupation, to come the last decision a few days ago, and after 15 years of the Israeli announcement of the mosque a part of the Jewish heritage, to be the culmination and practical translation of the occupation government’s decision in 2010, to withdraw Israel by simply the authority of the Ibrahimi Mosque’s administration from the Islamic endowments and the Palestinian municipality of Hebron, and received it to the religious council For the Kiryat Four settlement.
The consequences of this decision are in fact a fool and have very dangerous dimensions, as it is not only related to how to manage the mosque, but also goes beyond two fundamental points:
- First: It is considered a practical step on the way to implement a project to include the West Bank that the Extremist Finance Minister is working on, which is the settlement mind in the Netanyahu government. This is because Israel declares this decision that the Kiryat Four settlement is no longer an occupied military zone, as international law says, but it is all its human components an authentic recognized part of the government of Israel.
It is the complete practical application of the decision to consider the mosque a Jewish heritage, which had consequences on the ground at that time that no one has noticed almost, including, for example, the decision of the Netanyahu government in 2012 to extend a settlement road that connects the Ibrahimi Mosque to the Kiryat Four settlement directly, which passed its day without real reactions.
The Netanyahu government of this decision also gives legitimacy to the entities that the settlers invented in the West Bank settlements, and this is dangerous, because it also means strengthening the religious entities and councils of the settlers at the expense of other entities such as the official rabbinic of the state, which the settlers often exceed.
This makes settlers able to consider themselves as a state within the state, as well as the currently controlling religious Zionism stream of these religious entities. Perhaps this helped them in the future in separation and declaring an entity of their own rabbis in the event of a violent societal clash inside Israel, as many observers expect.
- Second: This decision is an experience that is intended to be applied in its entirety to the blessed Al -Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, where Israel considers the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron the area of tests and experiments for the process of Judaization and changing the existing situation, as it is later applied to the blessed Al -Aqsa Mosque, which is the crown and the climax of what Israel is looking for control over the holy places.
Consequently, the 58 -year -long scenario extending in the Ibrahimi Mosque, which the Netanyahu government today considered to be crowned with the announcement of the final victory by changing the mosque management and transporting the settlers, is actually applied in the blessed Al -Aqsa Mosque, but with one difference is the time.
Events and changes in the Al -Aqsa Mosque are accelerating than those that were applied in the Ibrahimi Mosque, as the Ibrahimi Mosque needed almost 27 years of temporal division to start the process of dividing it in 1994, and he needed 31 years after that to declare full Israeli sovereignty over him and transfer his administration to Jewish religious parties.
As for the Al -Aqsa Mosque, the currents of the extreme right and religious Zionism are rushing, as it seems from the stage of temporal division, which 2015 was a project they are trying to implement by force over the past ten years, to the stage of spatial division that he called for the first time, the MP of the Likud Party, Amait Halevi, in the middle of 2023, which they want to apply through steps, the first of which is building a church inside the Al -Aqsa Mosque.
This is what is demanded today with all the levels of the National Security Minister, Etamar Bin Ghaffir, and a large group of settlers ’leaders who vow to work to carry out this process in the near future.
Bin Ghafir wants to need himself to outperform Smutrich in this file.
Therefore, this decision, even if its theater is the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, its consequences for the Al -Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem will not be delayed, and we have already started to see these consequences, as the Minister of Jerusalem Meir Meir Brosh, affiliated to the “Yahdout Hatura” party, issued instructions to confiscate about 20 Palestinian properties in the way of the chain adjacent to the blessed Al -Aqsa Mosque and joined it to the neighboring Jewish neighborhood, Netanyahu related to the Ibrahimi Mosque, and one day before his resignation with his party from the government against the background of the Haridim recruitment crisis.
Thus, Israel guaranteed control of the Bab Al -Silsa area after it took control of the Mugrabi area 58 years ago in the wake of the occupation. This is a necessary introduction to emptying that region of the Palestinians and ensuring that there is no strong resistance in the event that the occupation authorities decide to deduct any parts of the Al -Aqsa Mosque in that aspect; With the aim of establishing a synagogue, as Bin Ghafir threatens.
Perhaps the coming days are pregnant with unprecedented attacks on the Al -Aqsa Mosque in light of these operations, especially with the Zionist right of the right -wing of the Zionist by providing control of the Ibrahimi Mosque with recent decisions, and we are on a date on Sunday 3 August with one of the most severe seasons of attacks on the Al -Aqsa Mosque, which is called the “memory of the ruin of the temple.”
The temple groups and religious Zionism can try to exploit the event and the atmosphere surrounding the region to advance major steps in the Al -Aqsa Mosque, as we returned in every season of central incursions.
Therefore, a decision like this in the Ibrahimi Mosque should not pass the honorable passage, and the Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims should not be satisfied with mere denunciation, condemnation and anger that does not exceed the papers and voices. If the occupation does not feel the amazing of the price of what it commits in the area, this will be seen by more, and the ball is in the stadium of our people.
The opinions in the article do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al -Jazeera.