General Studies- II (Effect of policies of other countries on India’s interests)
Gist of editorials
11 May 2021
On the last Friday of Ramzan last week, more than 150 people were injured when Israeli forces broke up a massive gathering of Palestinian worshippers who had gathered to pray at the Al-Aqsa mosque, revered as Islam’s third holiest site.
It came on a day Israel observes as Jerusalem Day, and marked the fourth day of clashes at one of the most revered and the most contested sites of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Behind the clashes:
There were more clashes in the area over the weekend.
- The stand-off came at the end of a week of tensions over the eviction of Palestinian residents from two neighbourhoods of East Jerusalem, Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan, to make way for Jewish settlers.
- The tensions came to a head again, hours before the annual May 10 Jerusalem Day processions by Jewish groups through the Old City of East Jerusalem.
- May 10, marks the day the territory was captured by Israeli forces during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
- Israel annexed the territory later and incorporated it into West Jerusalem, captured earlier, in the 1947 war.
The mosque & the Mount:
The Al-Aqsa is located on a plaza at Temple Mount, which is known in Islam as Haram-e-Sharif.
- The Mount is also Judaism’s holiest site.
- The most imposing structure on the compound is the Dome of the Rock, with its golden dome.
- The Western Wall, also known as the Wailing Wall sacred to Jews, is one side of the retaining wall of the Al-Aqsa compound.
- Al-Aqsa is central to the rival claims over Jerusalem.
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Claims over Jerusalem:
Both Israel and Palestine have declared Jerusalem their capital.
- In July 1980, the Israeli Parliament passed the Jerusalem Law declaring it the country’s capital.
- Palestinians declared Jerusalem the capital of the putative state of Palestine by a law passed by the Palestinian Authority in 2000.
- The 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence also declared Jerusalem as the capital.
For the present, the Palestinian Authority has its headquarters in Ramallah.
Source: Indian express
