ISRAEL DETAINS 20 PALESTINIANS IN EAST AL QUDS

Al Quds, 9 Shaban 1436/27 May 2015 (MINA) – Israeli police detained 20 Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem in the past 24 hours, a Palestinian NGO said today.

“Since Monday, over 20 Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, mostly children, have been detained,” Nasser Qous of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society said in a statement.

According to Qous, the detainees have already appeared before Israeli courts, which remanded most of them in custody, Middle East Monitor (MEMO) reports as quoted by Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA).

The remainder, he said, were ordered to pay fines or bail in order to be released.

East Jerusalem has recently witnessed clashes between Palestinian residents and Israelis coming to the holy city over the past two days to mark the Jewish holiday of Shavuot.

Since Sunday morning, tension has been running high around the Al-Aqsa Mosque complex.

The tension comes against the backdrop of calls by several Jewish organisations for supporters to enter the holy site en masse to commemorate the holiday.

For Muslims, Al-Aqsa represents the world’s third holiest site. Jews, for their part, refer to the area as the “Temple Mount”, claiming it was the site of two Jewish temples in ancient times.

Israel occupied East Jerusalem during the 1967 Middle East War. It later annexed the holy city in 1980, claiming it along with West Jerusalem as the unified capital of the self-proclaimed Jewish state in a move never recognised by the international community.

In September 2000, a visit to Al-Aqsa by controversial Israeli politician Ariel Sharon sparked what later became known as the “Second Intifada”, a popular uprising against Israel’s decades-long occupation in which thousands of Palestinians were killed. (T/P002/R03)

Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA)