HAMAS accused Israel of “a blatant attack on the religious and Islamic status of the city [of Jerusalem] and the [al-Aqsa] mosque” today, warning that Israeli moves to upset the status quo at the site could lead to “open religious war.”

Gaza’s ruling group spoke out after a group of Jewish religious extremists visited the site and blew the shofar — a ram’s horn which is trumpeted in the run-up to the Jewish new year, which begins at sunset on Sunday.

As the Israeli holiday season begins, thousands are expected to visit Jerusalem, increasing the likelihood of clashes like those which prompted an 11-day Israeli bombardment of Gaza in May last year, which killed hundreds of Palestinians.

The al-Aqsa mosque or Dome of the Rock is held to be the third-holiest site in Islam after Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia, but is located on the site of two ancient Jewish temples, being known to Jews as Temple Mount and regarded as their most sacred site.

Managed by a Jordanian trust, a loose set of rules state that Jews may visit but not pray at the site. Jewish groups which defy the rules often do so to assert Jewish control of all Jerusalem.

May 2021’s Gaza bombardment began with clashes as the mosque which unleashed a Palestinian general strike across Israel and occupied Palestine.

• The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions national committee today welcomed a decision by accommodation website Booking.com that “tourist reservations inside illegal settlements will now be labelled as a ‘high risk to safety and to human rights’ along with using the term ‘occupied’.”
But it called on the site to stop advertising such rentals entirely, saying in doing so it was profiting from “Israeli apartheid and war crimes.”