Kiswani said five Palestinians were injured.
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He said that four young Palestinians had been arrested for disrupting the passage of the people other than Muslims to the site.
“After it has become evident that the alleged statements by a rabbi on poisoning Palestinian wells, which were reported by various media outlets, are baseless, President Mahmoud Abbas has affirmed that he didn’t intend to do harm to Judaism or to offend Jewish people around the world”, his office said in a statement issued Friday.
He said police locked the protesters in the mosque and opened the site to tourists and Jewish visitors.
The Al-Aqsa Mosque, in East Jerusalem, is seen as the third most sacred site in Islam.
Prior to the past two days of raids and visits by Israeli extremists, Israel had closed the Al-Aqsa compound to Jewish and worldwide visitors during the last 10 days of Ramadan for the past 14 years. He said that he wasn’t aware of the police officers using any force against the civilians.
Islamic officials say Israeli authorities are allowing non-Muslim visitors into the compound in breach of a tradition which allows only worshippers to enter during the last 10 days of Ramadan. Jews, for their part, refer to the area as the “Temple Mount”, claiming it was the site of two Jewish temples in ancient times.
Israel occupied East Jerusalem during the 1967 Middle East War.
Earlier this year, Israeli troops reportedly escorted Israeli settlers to the holy site on numerous occasions during Passover week.
Visiting times and prayer rights at the mosque for non-Muslims have been an ongoing source of tension between Palestinians and Israeli police.
Director of the Islamic Endowment and Al-Aqsa mosque affairs Sheikh Azzam al-Khatib told Ma’an that “it was Israeli prime minister Netanyahu who took the decision to storm al-Aqsa mosque”. The organisation also criticised Israel as the occupying power for planting fake graves inside Muslims’ cemeteries.
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UNESECO “strongly condemns the Israeli aggressions and illegal measures against the freedom of worship and Muslims’ access to their Holy Site Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram Al Sharif, and requests Israel, the Occupying Power, to respect the historic Status Quo and to immediately stop these measures”, a statement read.
