MOFA Warns of the “Israeli Occupation” Attempts to Judaize Jerusalem & Promote Settlements

May 21, 2023

The city of Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque are subject to an increasing Judaization campaign that seeks to change the Islamic character of the holy city and impose new realities on the ground. In this regard, the occupation’s government held this morning, Sunday, May 21, its weekly meeting inside tunnels beneath Al-Buraq Wall and approved a huge budget for the “Holy Basin” project, which is a dangerous settlement project that aims at changing the Arab and Islamic character of Jerusalem by bringing new settlers to reside in the city.

In a similar vein, the occupation’s Minister of Internal Security, the notorious extremist “Itamar Ben Gvir”, desecrated, this morning, Al-Aqsa Mosque and performed Talmudic rituals in its halls in stark violation of the holy site and a complete disregard for the feelings of Muslims around the world.

All of this coincide with feverish settlement activity in the occupied West Bank amidst calls by the occupation’s Minister of Finance, the extremist “Bezalel Smotrich”, to settle more than half a million settlers in the occupied West Bank. In addition, the occupation’s army approved a decision that allows settlers to return to the settlement of Homesh in the northern West Bank for the first time since its evacuation in 2005.

This dangerous escalation of Judaization and settlement activity in the occupied Jerusalem and West Bank is, in fact, an application of the settlement agenda of the occupation’s far-right government, which drives, through its racist policy, the whole region into the abyss of a devastating religious war, while violating the International Law and UN resolutions.

In this regard, we hold the “Israeli occupation”, its government, and settlers fully responsible for the dire consequences of their criminal behavior against the Palestinian people, their land, and their holy sites. We also call on the Arab states to effectively interfere in order to protect Jerusalem and its holy sites, as declared in the final statement of the Arab Summit in Jeddah, which was released on May 19, 2023, and highlighted the need to “continue the efforts seeking to protect the city of Jerusalem and its holy sites in the face of condemned Judaization attempts of the Israeli occupation”.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Gaza – Palestine