Nearly 3,000 Palestinian worshippers were able to perform the dawn prayer at the Al‑Aqsa Mosque on Wednesday, marking the first large‑scale prayer gathering after 40 days of closure imposed by Israeli occupation authorities.
The Jerusalem Governorate said that thousands managed to reach the mosque despite intensified Israeli restrictions, including identity checks, the prevention of several young men from entering, and assaults on worshippers at the gates as police attempted to push them away from the mosque’s courtyards.
According to the Governorate, Israeli police also abducted Montaha ‘Emara at one of the mosque’s gates, only hours after detaining another young man inside the courtyards.
The Israeli Police said that both Al-Aqsa and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher will be open starting Today, Thursday, for the first time since they were closed on February 28.
The Governorate added that the mosque witnessed morning incursions by groups of Israeli colonizers, who performed singing and Talmudic rituals inside its courtyards under the protection of Israeli forces. These incursions took place during the expanded morning period, which now begins at 6:30 a.m. instead of 7:00 a.m.
It noted that the extension came after so‑called “Temple Organizations” announced new incursion hours, now running from 6:30 to 11:30 a.m., and again from 1:30 to 3:00 p.m., bringing the total to six and a half hours daily.
The Governorate stressed that the expanded schedule reflects an accelerated attempt to impose new facts inside Al‑Aqsa Mosque and entrench a de facto temporal division, especially following its reopening after a 40‑day closure.
Incursions by Israeli colonizers into Al‑Aqsa began in 2003, initially under full police protection. In 2008, the occupation authorities formalized the practice by assigning fixed morning hours — originally 7:00 to 10:00 a.m. These hours have expanded steadily over the years as part of a systematic effort to impose a new reality inside the mosque, reaching today’s 6.5 hours daily in a continued push toward enforcing temporal division.
The Jerusalem Governorate also noted that the Church of the Holy Sepulcher remained closed to the public throughout Holy Week and Easter, with only a handful of clergy allowed to perform the rituals behind closed doors due to Israeli restrictions imposed since February 28, 2026.
It is worth mentioning that the Orthodox Churches — including the Greek, Russian, Palestinian, Coptic, Romanian, Serbian, and other Orthodox communities — will celebrate Easter next week, on Sunday, April 12, 2026.
