[Politics] More than 100 injured in clashes in the courtyard of Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem

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Clashes between Palestinian demonstrators and the Israeli police on Friday morning in the courtyard of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, in the first confrontations of their kind since the beginning of the month of Ramadan, resulted in more than a hundred wounded, amid fears of an escalation in all the occupied Palestinian territories.

An official with the Palestinian Red Crescent told AFP that "117 wounded people were taken" to hospitals in Jerusalem, and "dozens" were treated on the spot during the clashes in the Old City of East Jerusalem, occupied by Israel since 1967.

For its part, the Israeli police announced that at least three of its members were wounded in the clashes, most of which stopped at noon on Friday.

The Temple Mount in the Old City of occupied East Jerusalem is constantly witnessing clashes between the Israeli police and Palestinian demonstrators.

Eyewitnesses said that Palestinians threw stones at the Israeli security forces, who responded by firing rubber bullets at some of them.

An AFP photographer saw more than 100 Palestinians throwing projectiles at Israeli security forces.

The Israeli police statement said that around 4:00 (0100 GMT) "dozens of masked young men carrying Hamas and Palestinian Authority flags" entered the Al-Aqsa Mosque and "collected stones, wooden boards and other objects that were used in violent riots."

The statement added that the police forces "waited until the end of the prayer" and then "the crowd threw stones at the Western Wall," noting that the police forces "with the escalation of violence, were forced to enter the lands surrounding the mosque."

 The statement stressed that "the police forces did not enter the mosque."

Pressure or war? -

These clashes in the Temple Mount are the first this year since the beginning of the month of Ramadan, during which Muslims gather at the holy site, which is one of the axes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Palestinians claim East Jerusalem, occupied since 1967, as the capital of their desired state.

During the month of Ramadan in 2021, night demonstrations in Jerusalem and clashes in the Al-Aqsa courtyard turned into an 11-day war between the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), which controls the Gaza Strip, and Israel.

On Friday, Ismail Haniyeh, head of Hamas' political bureau, whose movement called for mobilization against the Jewish state, said, "There is no place for invaders and occupiers in our holy Jerusalem."

Analysts believe that Hamas, whose capabilities were affected in the 2021 war, seeks to continue the conflict in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, while avoiding escalation in the Gaza Strip, especially since Israel could cancel thousands of work permits for workers in Gaza if a conflict erupts.

"Hamas does not want a new confrontation," said Mukhaimer Abu Saada, a professor of political science at Al-Azhar University in Gaza.

An Israeli security source said that Islamic Jihad would be more inclined to escalate with Israel.

The movement confirmed in a statement on Friday that "the attack on worshipers in Al-Aqsa Mosque is an aggressive crime for which the occupation bears full responsibility and its repercussions (...) and it was a failed attempt by the occupation to empty Al-Aqsa Mosque with the aim of desecrating it by terrorist settlers."

She added that "the enemy will realize that this fire that he ignites with his blind hatred will bounce back and burn him, and unless the occupation stops its hand from Al-Aqsa and stops its aggression against our people, the confrontation will be closer and more difficult than he thinks."

- 'No interest in escalation' -

Israeli Public Security Minister Omar Bar-Lev, a member of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's diverse coalition, asserted, "We have no interest in the Temple Mount becoming a hotbed of violence. This will harm the Muslims there and the Jews at the Western Wall."

The clashes come as Israel sent reinforcements to the West Bank and reinforced the separation wall with it, after four attacks that killed 14 people in the Jewish state, most of them civilians, in the last three weeks.

On the other hand, 22 Palestinians, including a number of attackers, have been killed in sporadic violence since then, according to a toll prepared by Agence France-Presse.

Three Palestinians were killed Thursday, while Israeli forces launched new operations in the Jenin area in the northern occupied West Bank, following a deadly attack by a Palestinian in Tel Aviv last week.

After the Tel Aviv attack, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett gave security forces "total freedom of movement" under the rubric of "defeating terrorism" in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel in 1967. Bennett warned that "there will be no limits" to this war.

The escalation of violence between the two sides during the month of Ramadan and before the celebrations of the Jewish Passover and Christian Passover.

Last year, East Jerusalem witnessed clashes that spread to the mosque's courtyards after demonstrations against the threat of eviction of Palestinian families in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood by Israeli settlers. The protests developed and led to a bloody escalation with the Gaza Strip that lasted 11 days.