Settlers Storm Al-Aqsa and Al-Ibrahimi Mosques
May 21, 2024
471 Palestinians were murdered in the Gaza Strip within one week since the start of the Israeli military attacks on the city of Rafah. The number of massacres has reached about 480, with 857 others wounded by Israeli fire from May 14 – 20, 2024, according to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation Media Observatory for Israel’s Crimes against the Palestinians.
It is worth noting that 35,960 were murdered from October 7, 2023 until today, with 84,426 wounded and two million displaced people.
Israeli attacks on the United Nations and aid convoys were the most prominent headlines this week. Six Palestinians were murdered in an Israeli bombing that targeted a school belonging to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza, which the Israeli occupation forces admitted to. It also murdered a Palestinian driver working for the UN World Health Organization, (WHO) and wounded a Jordanian employee after Israel targeted their car east of Rafah city.
Settlers also attacked the UNRWA headquarters in Sheikh Jarrah in al-Quds for the third time in a week, and attempts were also made to intercept aid convoys near the Tarqumiya crossing, where they tried twice to prevent aid trucks by spoiling part of their contents or throwing them on the ground. Other settlers, near one of the crossings in the town of Beit Awa, set fire to a truck loaded with humanitarian food supplies that was on its way to Gaza, after the Israeli troops forced about seven trucks to head to the town area following a settler attack on them near the Tarqumiya crossing.
In the West Bank, settlers near the town of Aqraba blocked a Jordanian aid truck loaded with barley grains for the Nablus Agriculture Directorate, and emptying about 50 bags from the truck.
On the ground, nine people were murdered in Tulkarm, Bethlehem, Jenin, Nablus, Jerusalem, and Ramallah. The occupation forces arrested 129 people from various Palestinian cities and villages, while the number of settler attacks on Palestinian towns and villages reached 58, as they assaulted and burned agricultural crops. The occupation forces demolished four houses in Hebron and Bethlehem, confiscated eight heavy equipment, including trucks, agricultural tractors, and others, and raided money exchange shops, in addition to storming the Ibrahimi Mosque in the city of Hebron.
In occupied al-Quds, 2,251 Jewish extremists stormed the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque five times over the past week, one of the days coinciding with the celebrations of the so-called “Independence Day”; and “Palestinian Nakba Commemoration”, where the occupation forces prevented Palestinians from entering Al-Aqsa Mosque in order to secure the extremists present in the Holy Mosque. The total number of Israeli violations against Palestinians over the past week amounted to about 2,216, ranging from murdering, wounding, arrests, demolition of homes, confiscations, assaults on properties, closure of crossings, settler attacks, desecration of mosques, and more.