Israel shuts Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque to Muslim worshippers for Jewish holiday

By Qais Abu Samra

HEBRON CITY, Palestine (AA) - Israel on Monday shut the flashpoint Ibrahimi Mosque in the West Bank city of Hebron and opened it for settlers to mark the Jewish holiday of Sukkot.

“The Israeli occupation authorities closed the Ibrahimi Mosque on Monday and Tuesday due to Sukkot,” Ghassan Al-Rajabi, the director of the Ibrahimi Mosque, told Anadolu.

He said that all parts of the mosque would be opened for Israeli settlers, adding that Israel closes the mosque for 10 days every year to Muslims on the occasion of different Jewish holidays.

Such moves, he said, are in the “framework of the continued spatial and temporal division” of the Ibrahimi Mosque.

Revered by both Muslims and Jews, Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque complex is believed to be the burial site of the prophets Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

After the 1994 massacre of 29 Palestinian worshippers inside the mosque by a Jewish extremist settler, Baruch Goldstein, the Israeli authorities divided the mosque complex between Muslim and Jewish worshippers.

UNESCO World Heritage Committee decided in July 2017 to include the Ibrahimi Mosque and the old city of Hebron on its World Heritage List.

Hebron is home to roughly 160,000 Palestinian Muslims and about 500 Jewish settlers. The latter live in a series of Jewish-only enclaves heavily guarded by Israeli troops.

*Writing by Mahmoud Barakat