It was a moment of profound joy marked by emotionally charged scenes and gestures. Once the historic gates of Al-Aqsa were reopened to Palestinian worshippers for dawn prayer, droves of worshippers flooded the courtyard of the mosque, many bursting into tears and falling to their kneels in a humble gesture of gratitude and thanking God for being allowed into the holy site after its closure.
Videos captured the sound of the adhan (the call to prayer) echoing in the lush greenery surrounding the majestic walls of the ancient mosque, and the imposing Dome of the Rock stood behind in solemnity as if in defiance of the Israeli restrictions on the site.
The Masjid Al-Aqsa, the Farthest Mosque, is an important holy site in Islam, located in the Old City of Jerusalem in Palestine. It was the first site to which Muslims used to direct their prayers before this was changed to Kaaba, or the Al-Masjid Al-Haram in Mecca. It was the second ever mosque to be built and is the third holiest site in Islam after Kaaba and the Prophet’s Mosque where Muslims perform the pilgrimage.
It is believed that it was in the Dome of the Rock that the Prophet Mohamed led the prayers of all preceding prophets during the Israa and Mirag journeys when he ascended to the heavens. The wider Al-Aqsa compound includes the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Dome of the Rock, 17 gates, and four minarets, and is usually referred to as Al-Haram Al-Sharif, on the Noble Sanctuary.
The mosque’s closure on 28 February, coinciding with the outbreak of the US-Israeli war on Iran, triggered widespread anger among Muslims. Long a flashpoint of conflict, Al-Aqsa has frequently been at the centre of heated debate. Jewish settlers in Palestine assert that it stands atop the biblical Temple of Solomon, a claim widely disputed by scholars and archaeological studies.
This time around, however, the closure was unprecedented. The compound and Jerusalem’s Old City remained deserted for 40 days, including during the final and most sacred period of the holy month of Ramadan and the Eid Al-Fitr holiday. For the first time in modern history, the mosque was silent during these holy days, and even the traditional Takbirat Al-Eid (glorification of Allah) were absent.
The Israeli authorities justified the closure on security grounds. But many Muslim scholars and analysts interpreted it as an attempt to impose a new reality regarding control over the site. The debate has since intensified over whether more drastic Israeli plans, including total monopoly and even possible demolition, are underway.
Following the ceasefire in the US-Israeli war on 9 April, the mosque reopened and an estimated 100,000 worshippers flocked to it for Friday prayers, reaffirming the site’s profound spiritual significance. The courtyards quickly came back to life, vendors returned, volunteers cleaned the mosque, and Quran lessons resumed.
Social media was flooded with videos reflecting the festive mood and people’s deep attachment to Islam’s third holiest sanctuary.
NEW RESTRICTIONS: But these festivities were soon overshadowed by new measures and further Israeli attempts to control access to the holy site.
Israeli forces set up checkpoints at the mosque’s gates to check worshippers’ IDs, sometimes even detaining and blocking young men and women from entering the compound.
According to press reports, the “Israeli police detained a female worshipper and banned her from the mosque, hours after detaining a young man inside the compound while forcing others to leave as settlers began entering the site.”
Al-Ahram Weekly tried to get in touch with ardent female defender Khadija Khuweis, whose face has been a constant feature at Al-Aqsa for nearly five decades. She has devoted her life to defending the mosque, defying restrictions through her unwavering presence in its courtyards, first as a student and then as a teacher of the Quran.
The Israeli occupation authorities have arrested her 28 times, yet she has never despaired or wavered in her commitment.
Khuweis, who did not respond to the Weekly’s attempts to contact her via Messenger, likely for security reasons, is now among those banned from entering the Al-Aqsa compound. She and her family have long been subjected to harassment and detention by the Israeli authorities. Based on previous media interviews and social-media posts, Khuweis believes that Al-Ribat, in other words maintaining a constant presence at Al-Aqsa, is the most effective way to defend it against ongoing attempts to Judaise and seize the holy site.
“We will not truly enjoy the blessings of Al-Aqsa until we dedicate our utmost energy, effort, struggle, and steadfastness to it, offering the best periods of our lives, our purest wealth, and our most sincere hearts,” Khuweis told the press.
She has also called for wider mobilisation to sustain a continuous presence at the site and to engage in spiritual retreat (al-itikaf) at Al-Aqsa as a means of countering Israeli settlement plans.
Former Palestinian prisoner Kameel Abu Heneish, deported to Egypt among 20 prisoners released in October 2025 in a major Hamas-Israel exchange agreement, concurred. A former member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, he wrote 16 books during his imprisonment. He told the Weekly that the constant Palestinian presence in defence of Al-Aqsa is “the least Palestinians can do to fulfil the religious duty of defending it”.
“But now more efforts are needed on the part of the Muslim world to save Islam’s third holiest place,” Abu Heneish insisted. “Al-Aqsa is in real danger.”
The Israeli security services have reportedly carried out provocative visits to the mosque compound to perform Talmudic rituals near the Dome of the Rock. Israeli groups have also reportedly performed “prostration” following calls from extremist Israeli settler groups to increase incursions into the site.
Similar actions have targeted the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, where Israeli settlers have displayed symbols such as the Star of David in moves widely viewed by Palestinians as further attempts to provoke Muslims and seize their most sacred spaces.
Religious authorities, including Egypt’s Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Ahmed Al-Tayeb, have condemned these actions, stressing the Islamic identity of both sites. Yet some analysts argue that statements alone are insufficient.
Abdel-Qader Yassin, a 90-year-old Palestinian historian and the author of 31 books on the history of resistance and Jerusalem, insists that the issue extends beyond Al-Aqsa itself.
“The focus should be on Jerusalem as a whole and on a comprehensive strategy for Palestinian liberation,” he said, emphasising the need for unity among the Palestinian factions and coordinated Arab action.
Without such efforts, Yassin lamented, “Israeli policies will continue to expand and become even more blatant.”
“We’ve tried the diplomatic paths for decades, and the weakness on the part of Arab regimes has made the Zionist regime even more tyrannical,” Yassin said.
Many observers believe that developments at Al-Aqsa are being overshadowed by wider regional conflicts, including the US-Israeli war on Iran, the Israeli war on Lebanon, and the Gaza war. This distraction, they argue, has allowed Israeli violations at the Mosque to escalate with less scrutiny.
Israeli violations and the desecration of the Al-Aqsa Mosque reportedly escalated even further after 7 October 2023. Analysts argue that the demolition of the Dome of the Rock Mosque is entrenched in the doctrine of the Zionist far right as part of plans to erect a version of the Temple of Solomon in its place.
PLANS FOR DEMOLITION: Extremist Israeli settlers had long claimed that the Al-Aqsa Mosque was built on the Temple of Solomon, and particularly since the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in 2007, extremist settlers had been keen to enter and desecrate the Al-Aqsa compound to provoke Muslim worshippers.
These raids have recently become more frequent, often led by far-right Israeli politicians like Itamar Ben-Gvir.
“There has always been an intention to take control of Al-Aqsa,” Abu Heneish told the Weekly. “But with the rise of far-right religious figures in the Israeli government, the threat has become more imminent.”
The sanctuary’s administration was handed to Jordan following the 1967 War, but many agree with Abu Heneish that the Jordanian custodianship was on paper only and that Israel was in control of the Al-Aqsa complex.
Although non-Muslims are not allowed to worship at Al-Aqsa, Jewish individuals and groups have long made attempts to enter the compound, and these gained momentum after the outbreak of the Second Intifada in the late 1990s.
Jewish settlers started to claim land in East Jerusalem and surrounding areas, and this led to repeated clashes and tensions with Muslim worshippers at Al-Aqsa. The Israeli police reportedly backed the settlers.
“They don’t just want to take control of Al-Aqsa, but they also want to usurp the land and kick out the Palestinians, who they see as a threat to their existence,” Abu Heneish said.
Witnesses from Jerusalem have previously told the Weekly that before the 7 October attacks on Israel, a date had already been set for the demolition, and cows had been brought to be burned in a special ritual on the Mount of Olives overlooking Old Jerusalem, in order to scatter their ashes around the area in the belief that this would hasten the process.
The 7 October attacks on Israel, however, disturbed those plans, they said.
Jerusalem has been besieged ever since with little or no control over the mosque on the part of the local Muslim religious authority.
An analysis published on the London-based news website the New Arab titled “Israeli Extremists are Exploiting the Gaza War to upend Al-Aqsa’s Status Quo” warned that during the Gaza war “the extremist-Zionist Temple Mount movement has developed from a fringe group into a popular mainstream movement whose growing popularity has been even more sensed since the beginning of the war.”
The extremist group calls for removing the Jordanian custodianship of the Al-Aqsa complex and reversing the status quo by imposing full Jewish control over the sanctuary that would also control Muslims praying at the mosque.
Since the beginning of the Gaza war, Israeli Temple Mount groups like Beyadenu have gone through an ideological shift and are calling for the Israeli government to ban Palestinian Muslims altogether from the Al-Aqsa Mosque rather than share the premises.
The movement’s ideological shift is a source of anxiety for many
“The Al-Aqsa Mosque is now being opened freely for these extremist groups in order to perform their prayers, and the Muslims are not allowed in their Mosque anymore,” Abdallah Marouf, an Islamic history professor at Istanbul 29 Mayis University and an ex-media official at Al-Aqsa, told the New Arab.
“Al-Aqsa is now a main target for the Israeli political system,” editor of Palestinian Chronicle Ramzy Baroud concurred. “They feel that by removing this symbol altogether from the Palestinian collective consciousness, they can deny Palestinians leverage and to have something to fight for.”
Analysts view recent Israeli escalations at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the larger context of the so-called “deal of the century” declared by US President Donald Trump in 2020.
The controversial deal condones the Zionist “peace plan” that includes three main changes that would reverse the centuries-old status quo at the Al-Aqsa sanctuary. It aims at transferring the site to Israeli sovereignty, repealing Jordan’s paper custodianship over the sanctuary, and ending the ban on non-Muslim prayer.
As a result, the plan aims to achieve what Israel could not attain during the 1967 occupation of Jerusalem.
“Such changes would not only mean that Muslims lose further access to their mosque, but would also allow people of other faiths, particularly Jews, to share the site with Muslims in preparation for a full Jewish monopoly over the site and the building of Jewish temple on its site,” explained a paper titled “The Future of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the Light of Trump’s Deal of the Century” co-authored by Khalid Al-Awaisi and Cuma Yavuz at the Social Sciences University of Ankara in Turkey.
Abu Heneish argues that such proposals are in violation of international law, which does not recognise Israeli sovereignty over Occupied Palestinian Territory. “The whole world, including UNESCO, acknowledges Palestinian rights and recognises Al-Aqsa as a Muslim holy site,” he said.
He added that the US had long refrained from relocating its embassy to Jerusalem, “until Trump broke with the established international consensus and moved it during his first term in office.”
ISRAELI MYTHS: The location of the Al-Aqsa Mosque may stand behind the Israeli occupation of Jerusalem.
The complex, named by Muslims Al-Haram Al-Sharif, is located on a plaza that Israel calls the Temple Mount. This is believed to be Judaism’s holiest site. The Western Wall, also known as the Wailing Wall sacred to Jews, is one side of the retaining wall of the Al-Aqsa compound.
This overlapping religious significance has made the Al-Aqsa complex a focal point of contention between Palestinians and the Israeli occupation, turning it into one of the most sensitive and disputed sites in the world.
“There is only one fact that cannot be refuted and is not even open to debate: that the Al-Aqsa Mosque existed even before humanity and thousands of years before the advent of the children of Israel,” said Al-Husseini Hassan Hammad, professor of Islamic history and civilisation at Al-Azhar University in Cairo and an associate member of the History and Civilisation Committee of Al-Azhar’s Council of Senior Scholars.
The Al-Aqsa Mosque, he argued, “existed even before Adam was born or perhaps was built at the hands of Adam.”
According to Hammad, even within Jewish traditions there is no consensus on the alleged location of the temple. “The Samaritan Jews, a sect of Jews, believe that it was built in the city of Nablus, and they do not acknowledge the claims of the other Jewish sects,” Hammad elaborated.
Meanwhile, he said, “contemporary Jewish rabbis, scholars, and researchers, especially those from America and Britain, believe that the temple built by Solomon is located in Palestine, but they differ among themselves in determining its location.”
“Some of them believe that it is under the Al-Aqsa Mosque, others claim it is under the Dome of the Rock, and a third party say that it is outside the Al-Haram area,” Hammad said. “There are also those who claim that it is in an area far from the Al-Aqsa Mosque.”
Hammad further noted that “the era of the Prophet Suleiman [Solomon in the Jewish tradition] was in the 10th century BCE, tens of thousands of years after the existence of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.”
Many would agree with Hammad that archaeological evidence does not support claims linking the mosque to the Temple.
“All the international archaeological studies and excavations carried out on the mosque found no trace or evidence that the Temple of Solomon existed there and have refuted Jewish claims that it stood next to the Western Wall of the Al-Aqsa Mosque,” Hammad told the Weekly.
“Even the excavations carried out by the Israelis for decades under, inside, and around the Al-Aqsa Mosque have not been able to prove the existence of any traces of the alleged structure.”
“Such fabrications and false claims are meant to support the demolition of the Al-Aqsa Mosque as an important sanctuary to Muslims and thus remove the Islamic identity of the sacred area,” Hammad concluded.
For Jerusalem’s murabitun, such as Khuweis, who spent 14 consecutive days at Al-Aqsa during the 2019 “Gate of Mercy” (Bab Al-Rahma) uprising, such arguments reinforce their determination to continue their defence of Al-Aqsa. Murabitun are Muslims who remain present at or protect the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Despite being banned from entering the compound due to her role in awareness-raising campaigns encouraging worshippers to maintain a presence at the site, Khuweis is far from alone.
Hundreds of others continue to follow the same path, maintaining a presence at Al-Aqsa despite the Israeli restrictions.
“We must continue to raise awareness about the risks facing Al-Aqsa until the wider Muslim world wakes up, recognises the urgency of the situation, and takes meaningful action,” Abu Heneish concluded.
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