Israeli forces close West Bank mosque amid Jewish holiday

Israeli forces closed the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, within the occupied West Bank, on October 8th, the Middle East Eye via Wafa news agency reported.

The closure will last from October 8th until the evening of October 9th and was allegedly done for the security of Israeli settlers during celebrations for the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, which began on October 7th.

Military checkpoints and electronic gates leading to the mosque have been closed by Israeli troops; market stalls in the Old City have also been shut down.

The Occupied West Bank, is an area that is experiencing escalating violence from Israeli settlers; it was announced on September 3rd that Israel plans to annex 82% of the West Bank, leaving six isolated Palestinian enclaves (including Hebron) outside of Israeli jurisdiction.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who unveiled the plan, had said: “It is time to apply Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria [the biblical term for the West Bank] and remove, once and for all, the idea of dividing our small land and establishing a terrorist state in its heart.”

Both the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Occupied Jerusalem and the the Ibrahimi Mosque have faced closures. Israeli forces blocked worshippers from entering Al-Aqsa on June 13th.

Hebron was a key site of targeted arrests in November 2023, in which Israeli forces detained 40 Palestinian residents of the Occupied West Bank; this was part of a campaign of intimidation and violence directed at Palestinians in the aftermath of the Hamas-led attack on October 7th, 2023.

The West Bank has been under Israeli occupation since the 1967 war, which also led to Israel capturing the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights from Syria. Since then, dozens of Israeli settlements have been built.

The Ibrahimi Mosque was the site of a massacre by Israeli settler Baruch Goldstein in 1994, where 29 Palestinian worshippers were murdered and 125 others were wounded.

Allegedly, a portrait of Goldstein used to be in Israeli national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s living room. Ben-Gvir leads the Otzma Yehudit (“Jewish Power”) political party, and has previously urged the Israeli authorities to have Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails “shot in the head.”

Middle East Eye via Wafa news agency, Maghrebi.org