SCORES of extremist Israeli settlers desecrated the Aqsa Mosque in Occupied Jerusalem on Sunday morning – while tight restrictions were imposed on the entry of Muslim worshippers to the Islamic holy site.
Eyewitnesses said that dozens of settlers, under strong police protection, entered the Mosque through the Maghariba Gate and toured its courtyards, where they received lectures from rabbis about the alleged ‘Temple Mount’ and a number of them provocatively performed Talmudic prayers.
Meanwhile, the Israeli occupation police imposed movement and entry restrictions on Muslim worshippers at the Aqsa Mosque’s entrances and gates and prevented many of them from entering the holy site.
Meanwhile, in another part of the occupied West Bank on Sunday, a horde of extremist Jewish settlers stormed the village of Turmus Ayya, in the northeast of Ramallah, and smashed up a private car belonging to a Palestinian citizen.
In Jericho, another group of settlers grazed their livestock on cultivated land near homes belonging to the residents of the Shallal al-Auja community as part of a daily provocative practice aimed at forcing the villagers to leave the area.
On Sunday night, settlers destroyed plastic water tanks and pipelines in the Palestinian community of Nab’ Ghazal near al-Farisiya village in the northern Jordan Valley.
In a related context, Palestinian religious and national figures and institutions have urged Palestinian citizens to intensify their presence at the Aqsa Mosque to protect it against desecration by Jewish settlers.
Meanwhile, an American nun said that Israeli policies have made the lives of both Palestinian Christians and Muslims ‘extremely difficult,’ due to restrictions on movement, land confiscation, and settlement construction.
She also stressed that the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) is a resistance movement, not a terrorist organisation, and that it defends its people and land.
Mother Agapia Stephanopoulos, who has lived in the Palestinian town of Bethany in the occupied West Bank since 1996, appeared in an interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson on a popular US television programme.
The interview sparked wide controversy after she spoke about her two-decade-long experience in the occupied Palestinian territories.
She affirmed that Christians there face suffering similar to that experienced by Muslims under Israeli occupation.
She added that the number of Palestinian Christians has significantly declined since the Nakba (Catastrophe – the brutal establishment of the State of Israel) in 1948 due to restrictions and displacement, emphasising that ‘the problem is not religious but national,’ as Christians face the same discrimination because of their Palestinian identity.
The nun criticised what she described as the ‘blind support’ of some Christian Zionists in the United States for Israel, saying they ignore the suffering of Palestinian Christians and justify settlement expansion and land confiscation.
Mother Agapia Stephanopoulos also pointed out that churches and Christian institutions in the West Bank and Gaza have been bombed and destroyed, and this is part of a systematic targeting of Palestinians.
She explained that Palestinian Christians live in natural cohesion with Muslims, citing the example of Christian schools in Bethlehem and Jerusalem where the majority of students are Muslims, stressing that coexistence is the prevailing feature of Palestinian society.
The interview, titled: ‘This is How Christians Live in the Holy Land,’ received over 12 million views and was considered one of the most prominent episodes shedding light on the conditions of both Palestinian Christians and Muslims under occupation, and the violence and restrictions they both face from settlers and Israeli authorities.
- The US State Department is no longer issuing visas for children from Gaza to receive necessary medical care, a move that comes as Israel’s genocidal war and induced famine in the Strip reach new extremes, with over 61,800 killed so far.
This comes days after Israel said it intended to launch a new onslaught to occupy northern Gaza City, the besieged territory’s largest urban centre, in a plan that raised international alarm over the fate of the demolished Strip, home to about 2.2 million people.
‘All visitor visas for individuals from Gaza are being stopped while we conduct a full and thorough review of the process and procedures used to issue a small number of temporary medical-humanitarian visas in recent days,’ the State Department wrote in a post on X on Saturday.
It comes a day after an online pressure campaign led by Laura Loomer, a far-right activist and Donald Trump ally.
Loomer, who has described herself as ‘a proud Islamophobe’, posted on X that Palestinians ‘who claim to be refugees from Gaza’ entered the US via San Francisco and Houston this month.
‘How is allowing for Islamic immigrants to come into the US America First policy?’ she said on X in a later post, going on to report further Palestinian arrivals in Missouri and claiming that ‘several US Senators and members of Congress’ had texted her to express their fury.
‘Is Rubio even aware of this?’ Loomer wrote, in reference to the secretary of state who was at the time in Alaska meeting Vladimir Putin.
After the suspension of the visa programme, Loomer claimed victory.
‘This is fantastic news,’ she wrote in response to the state department announcement.
She added: ‘Hopefully all GAZANS will be added to President Trump’s travel ban. There are doctors in other countries. The US is not the world’s hospital!’
The Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, a charity based in the United States, urged the Trump administration to ‘reverse this dangerous and inhumane decision.’
Over the past three decades, the charity has facilitated the evacuation of thousands of Palestinian children to the United States for medical treatment, as stated in their announcement.
The charity said: ‘Medical evacuations are a lifeline for the children of Gaza who would otherwise face unimaginable suffering or death due to the collapse of medical infrastructure in Gaza.’
The Council on Islamic-American Relations said the block on visas was ‘the latest sign that the intentional cruelty of President Trump’s “Israel First” administration knows no bounds’.
It added that it was ‘deeply ironic’ that the Trump administration was meanwhile ‘rolling out the red carpet for racists and indicted war criminals from’ the Israeli regime.
‘This ban is just the latest example of our government’s complicity with Israel’s genocide, which is increasingly rejected by the American people,’ it continued.
Paul Graham, co-founder of the Silicon Valley startup incubator Y Combinator, wrote on X after the visa halt was announced: ‘If Laura Loomer had been around in 1940, she’d have been trying to prevent Jewish refugees from entering the US. You know she would. And if Trump had been president then, she’d have succeeded.’
- A young Palestinian woman who had been airlifted from Gaza to a hospital in Italy in a state of severe emaciation to receive treatment has died, the hospital announced on Saturday.
The young woman (20 years old), identified by Italian media reports as Marah Abu Zahri, arrived in Pisa on a humanitarian flight organised by the Italian government late last Wednesday-Thursday night.
After undergoing examinations and beginning treatment on Friday, she died following a sudden respiratory crisis and cardiac arrest, the hospital confirmed.
The young woman arrived in Italy with her mother on one of three Italian Air Force flights this week that transported 31 patients, the wounded, and their companions to Rome, Milan, and Pisa.
The Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed upon the patients’ arrival that they were all suffering from serious congenital diseases, injuries, or amputations. So far, more than 180 children and young people from Gaza have been transferred to Italy since the start of the Israeli war on October 7th, 2023.
The hospital did not provide further details about her condition, but Italian news agencies reported that she had been suffering from severe malnutrition.
Humanitarian organisations, United Nations agencies, and Hamas have all warned of Israel’s starvation policies in Gaza. The latest figures from the Ministry of Health in the Strip reported that 251 people, including 108 children, have died due to starvation and malnutrition.
