JERUSALEM, October 5, 2025 (WAFA) – The Jerusalem Governorate has released a detailed report documenting the violations and crimes committed by Israeli occupation forces and colonists in Jerusalem since the onset of the genocidal war on the Gaza Strip in October 2023.
The findings reveal a dangerous escalation in collective punishment targeting Jerusalem’s residents and its sacred sites.
According to the report, 97 Palestinians have been killed in Jerusalem since October 7, 2023—underscoring the occupation’s continued disregard for Palestinian life.
Israeli authorities are also withholding the bodies of 49 slain Palestinians from Jerusalem, in flagrant violation of international humanitarian law, which prohibits the withholding of bodies and demands respect for the dignity of the dead.
The report recorded 491 injuries resulting from excessive force used by Israeli troops, including live and rubber-coated metal bullets, severe beatings, and tear gas suffocation. Among the injured are workers attacked while attempting to reach their jobs under siege conditions.
In a direct assault on religious freedom and the historical status quo, 122,784 Israeli colonists have stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque under heavy police protection since October 7.
The report notes that Israeli authorities have imposed a morning and evening visitation system designed to enforce a temporal and spatial division of the mosque and erase its Islamic identity.
The Governorate also documented 2,688 detentions across Jerusalem neighborhoods and towns, accompanied by harsh and arbitrary rulings issued by Israeli courts. These include 723 prison sentences, 171 house arrest orders, 303 expulsion orders from Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Old City, and other key areas, and 18 travel bans.
The report warns that Israeli authorities have exploited global focus on the genocide in Gaza to intensify punitive measures in Jerusalem—imposing further collective punishments and silencing Palestinian voices through legal and physical repression.
Since October 7, Israeli forces have carried out 742 demolitions and land-leveling operations in the Jerusalem Governorate, most targeting Palestinian homes and structures under the pretext of lacking permits.
The report emphasizes that building permits are rarely granted to Palestinians, turning these demolitions into a systematic tool of Judaization aimed at displacing the city’s indigenous population.
These figures, the Governorate affirms, reflect a deliberate policy to empty Jerusalem of its Palestinian residents and impose a new colonial reality.
The withholding of bodies violates the Geneva Conventions; mass detentions and arbitrary rulings constitute unlawful detention under international law; and the destruction of homes is a war crime under Article 53 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Incursions into Al-Aqsa Mosque breach the historical status quo and threaten the site’s Islamic identity.
The report concludes with a warning: this systematic escalation against Jerusalem and its people is part of a broader campaign to impose new facts on the ground and erase Palestinian presence—enabled by a troubling international silence that allows the occupation to continue its violations without accountability.
