Israel blocks provision of drinking water in Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque

Israel’s occupation authorities have again prevented drinking water from being available at the Ibrahimi Mosque in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron, a Palestinian official said on Sunday.

According to the director of the mosque, Ghassan Al-Rajabi, it was the fourth day in a row that Israel had blocked the provision of drinking water.

Al-Rajabi said that the measure by the Israeli occupation authorities was an attempt to restrict the number of worshippers and put pressure on the Palestinians staying inside the mosque to leave. Illegal Jewish settlers, meanwhile, are protected by occupation security forces whenever they choose to storm into the sacred site.

He added that Israel seeks, through such measures, to impose its full control over the mosque, but stressed that the Palestinians will continue to resist and defend their land and religious sanctities in order to undermine the occupation state’s systematic Judaisation programme.

In 1994, a Jewish settler from America used his Israeli army rifle to kill 29 Muslim worshippers and wound more than 100 others as they were engaged in the dawn prayer in the Ibrahimi Mosque. The survivors overpowered Baruch Goldstein and killed him. His grave became a shrine for the Jewish settlers in and around occupied Hebron.

Meanwhile, in occupied Jerusalem, illegal Jewish settlers have continued their raids at Al-Aqsa Mosque under the full protection of the Israeli occupation forces. Eyewitnesses said that at least 120 Jewish settlers stormed into the mosque on Sunday and performed Talmudic rituals in the sanctuary.

READ: Israel cuts parts of stairs of Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron