Israel's plan to divide al-Aqsa Mosque part of 'apartheid crime'

Europeans for Al Quds association has expressed deep concern over the Israeli regime’s plan to divide time and space between Muslims and Jews at the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in the occupied Old City of al-Quds

The association said in a Sunday statement that the plan by the regime's Knesset member Amit Halevi of the right-wing Likud Party constitutes a serious escalation of the apartheid crime by Israel.

“The plan aims at Judaizing the al-Aqsa Mosque and imposing the spatial division on it,” the statement read.

It called on the United Nations and the European Union countries to act urgently to stop the Israeli Judaization plans across the holy city. 

The association warned that such a plan is an attempt to distort the fact that the mosque is an Islamic holy place overall.

Halevi recently devised a plot aimed at dividing the holy mosque between the vast majority of Muslims who reside in al-Quds, and extremist Zionist settlers that claim the right to "pray" at the compound.

The Zionist politician has also called for allocating the southern part of the compound to Muslims while reserving the central and northern parts that include the holy Dome of the Rock for the radical Zionists.

Halevi has also boasted that his scheme is aimed at taking away the Jordanian government’s custodianship of the al-Aqsa Mosque.

The al-Aqsa Mosque compound, which sits just above the Western Wall plaza, houses both the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque.

The Jewish visitation of al-Aqsa is permitted, but as part of a decades-old agreement between Jordan – the custodian of Islamic and Christian sites in al-Quds – and Israel in the wake of Israel’s occupation of East al-Quds in 1967, non-Muslim worship at the compound is prohibited.

Elsewhere in the statement, the association reiterated its continuous quest to stop the Israeli attempts to change the Islamic identity of al-Quds. It also strongly condemned the Israeli policy of forcible expulsion of citizens from their homes in the holy city.

Palestinians demand control over the occupied West Bank as part of their future independent state and regard al-Quds’ eastern sector as the capital of their future sovereign state.

'Declaration of war': Palestinian groups warn Israel of plan to divide al-Aqsa

Palestinian resistance groups have censured attempts by Israeli authorities to divide the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in the occupied Old City of al-Quds as a declaration of war.

'Unpredictable consequences'

Speaking at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting held in Ramallah on Monday, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh warned the Israeli occupying authorities against submitting the controversial bill to the Israeli Knesset in the coming days. 

"Taking this step would cause overwhelming anger with unpredictable results because of the sanctity and religious value that al-Aqsa Mosque constitutes for the Palestinian people and for Arabs and Muslims as it is their first Qiblah and the site of the Prophet Mohammad’s journey and ascension to heaven (al-Isra wal-Miraj).”

He called for Arab, Islamic, and international action to stop Israel from expanding settlements and committing any violation of Islamic and Christian sanctities.

Palestinians have warned any changes to the holy site would "drag the region into the furnace of a religious war" and engulf the entire region. 

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