On Monday, some 1,000 Israeli security forces stormed the al-Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem, injuring more than 300 Palestinians.
According to WSWS.com, the troops locked worshippers inside the mosque, preventing them from getting medical help and beating up those who sought to help the injured.
“What is going on is a crime perpetrated by the Israeli occupation against the right to hold prayers. It is a crime against the people of Jerusalem but their actions will fail,” Sheikh Muhammad Hussein, the grand mufti of Jerusalem, told Al Jazeera.
The attack on the mosque came on Jerusalem Day, which is the anniversary of Israel’s 1967 annexation of East Jerusalem from Jordan and the building of settlements. This is in violation of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, which states, “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”
In response to the mosque storming, rockets were fired from Gaza into Israel. The New York Times reported it was the first time in seven years that Hamas in Gaza fired rockets at Jerusalem.
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) retaliated, claiming to have hit 130 Hamas and Jihad targets. Israel said its offensive was in response to the 200 rockets fired from Gaza that hit areas in Ashkelon, injuring some 90 civilians and killing two women.
The IDF said it had killed two top PIJ commanders responsible for rocket fire in Gaza.
It was reported that 24 Palestinians were killed from Israel’s attack, including nine children.
One Israeli military official indicated the country is preparing to dig in for a long conflict and said Tel Aviv’s response would not “last several minutes, but days.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said,
“We are in the midst of a campaign… Since yesterday, the IDF has been attacking hundreds of Hamas and Islamic Jihad sites in Gaza. We have neutralized commanders, we have hit many of their quality targets. Hamas will be struck in ways that it did not expect.”
The Trends Journal has been reporting on the recent escalation of tension in the region between Israelis and Palestinians. On 4 May, we published the article, “ISRAEL ACCUSED OF APARTHEID BY HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH,” which pointed out there is a growing chorus of international and Israeli groups that have been critical of the treatment of Palestinians.
Tensions were rising before the Israeli attack on the mosque, as a result of their efforts to efforts to remove Palestinians from certain areas in Jerusalem.
TREND FORECAST: As Gerald Celente has long noted and history shows, “When all else fails, they take you to war.”
We have reported that since November 2019, Netanyahu has been under the pressure of a criminal indictment on charges of fraud and bribery. Israel held its fourth national election in less than two years, and Netanyahu has again failed to put together a winning coalition.
While the storming of the mosque by Israeli troops on Monday and military actions are making the news, quickly forgotten was that there was a scheduled meeting to form a coalition government, which would have excluded Netanyahu. Mansour Abbas, the leader of the United Arab List, will support Lapid’s centrist Yesh Atid party and Naftali Bennett’s right-wing Yamina as long as his demands are met.
“There is a good chance a government will already be able to form a government this week,” a source told Haaretz.
