Clashes between Israel and Hamas

  • Conflict has been escalating between Israel and Palestine. 
  • Israeli armed forces stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque in the Haramesh-Sharif in Jerusalem, ahead of a march by Zionist nationalists commemorating Israel’s capture of the eastern half of the city in 1967. 
  • More than 300 Palestinians were injured in the raid. 
EVENTS
  • Tensions have been building up since the start of Ramzan in mid-April when Israeli police set up barricades at the Damascus Gate outside the occupied Old City, pre venting Palestinians from gathering there. 
  • As clashes erupted, the police removed the barricades, but tensions were already high. 
  • The threatened eviction of dozens of Palestinian families in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah escalated the crisis further in the last week of Ramzan.
  • The Israeli authorities had given permission to the Jerusalem Day march, traditionally taken out by far-right Zionists through the Arab Quarter of the Old City. 
  • Ahead of the march on May 10 (which was rerouted given the tensions), Israeli armed forces stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque with rubber bullets, stun grenades and tear gas to evict Palestinians, who Israel said had camped with stones and Molotov cocktail. 
  • Hamas issued an ultimatum to the Israeli troops to stand down from Al-Aqsa. By the evening, they launched rockets. 
  • Israeli strikes followed. 
AL-AQSA MOSQUE
  • It is the third holiest structures in the Islamic faith. 
  • It sits inside a 35-acre site known by Muslims as Haram al-Sharif, or the Noble Sanctuary, and by Jews as the Temple Mount.
  • The site is part of the Old City of Jerusalem, sacred to Christians, Jews and Muslims.
  • It is believed to have been completed early in the eighth century and faces the Dome of the Rock, the golden-domed Islamic shrine that is a widely recognized symbol of Jerusalem.
  • The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO, has classified the Old City of Jerusalem and its walls as a World Heritage Site.
HAMAS
  • Hamas was founded in 1987.
  • Headquarters: Gaza, Gaza Strip.
  • It is a Palestinian Sunni-Islamic fundamentalist organization.
  • It won the 2006 Palestinian legislative election and became the de facto governing authority of the Gaza Strip following the 2007 Battle of Gaza.
  • In December 2018, the United Nations General Assembly rejected a U.S. resolution condemning Hamas as a terrorist organization.

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