During the month of Ramadan, Palestinians forbid Aqsa from turning to smuggling

JERUSALEM – Only moonlight pierced the darkness one recent early morning when a smuggler led Husam Misk to a ladder against an Israeli concrete barrier.

Misk, a 27-year-old dentist, said he climbed the ladder quickly but had yet to reach the top of the 26-foot-high wall. He grabbed the edge where the razor wire had been cut and lifted himself, pausing for a moment to examine the area. No sign of any soldiers.

He grabbed the rope dangling from the other side, leaned against the wall, and lowered himself.

About an hour later, Mr. Misk said, he walked into the grounds of Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem just in time for dawn prayers. Banned from legally crossing the border into Jerusalem from his home in the West Bank, he is one of many Palestinians who use other means to visit one of Islam’s holiest sites during the holy month of Ramadan.

“I come from faith to pray and unite,” said Mr. Misk, sitting under a tree on the Aqsa campus one recent afternoon. “Because Al Aqsa is at the center of the struggle between us and the Israelis.”

The Israeli government, which normally bans West Bank residents from entering Jerusalem without a permit, often relaxes restrictions to allow hundreds of thousands of people to visit Al Aqsa during the month of Ramadan. Children 12 years of age and younger, women and men 50 years of age and older are allowed to attend Friday Prayers there without a permit. Men between the ages of 40 and 50 can enter with an existing permit.

But most young men and those with criminal records are returned to official crossings or denied entry. While Palestinians see such restrictions as discriminatory, Israeli officials, still reeling from a series of Palestinian attacks killed 14 people starting just before Ramadan, insisting they were necessary security measures.

Many Palestinians are denied entry – hundreds a day, border crossers say – instead climbing the controversial separation fence, walking through openings where the fence is a metal fence or walking Walk through mountainous terrain where there are gaps in the fence. Others booked doctor’s appointments to get medical permits to enter Jerusalem, or bribed soldiers or Jewish settlers to get them through checkpoints, according to people who used these methods.

Some live-streamed their journey to encourage other Palestinians to follow their path.

While interviewees who broke the rules said they came to Aqsa to pray or pay respects to the historic site, Israeli officials argue that the unattended entries have the potential to be a threat. security threat.

Hundreds of Palestinians, mostly young men, have been arrested at the mosque in the past two weeks, on charges of rioting. A police spokesman said that “a small number” of those arrested were found to have entered Israel illegally.

Over the past two years, during the coronavirus pandemic, security along the 440-mile fence has become looser and holes in the fence have multiplied.

Recent Palestinian attacks have focused the government’s attention on insecurity. Israeli authorities have identified one of the attackers, a gunman who killed five people on the outskirts of Tel Aviv last month, as a West Bank resident who illegally crossed the border into Israel.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, speaking of the holes in the barrier at a cabinet meeting this month, admitted “for many years it has been completely riddled with holes.”

The Israeli military has since increased security along the fence, repaired holes, dug trenches to block vehicle traffic and deployed additional troops. And Israel’s security cabinet has approved more than $100 million to build an additional 25 miles of fence.

The struggle for some Palestinians to access Al Aqsa is part of a broader confrontation for control of the mosque compound – known to Jews as Temple Mount, the site of the ancient temple and the the holiest place in Judaism – and the ancient center of Jerusalem, known as the Old City.

Israel captured the Old City from Jordan in 1967, along with the rest of East Jerusalem. Israel has since annexed the area as part of its capital, but much of the world, including the United Nations Security Council, considers it occupied territory.

Palestinians see East Jerusalem as the future capital of a Palestinian state. Some fear that the mosque compound is under risk from the growing number of Jewish worshipers allowed to enter and pray on the mountaintop, and from a fringe group of right-wing activists seeking to rebuild the synagogue there.

Tension exploded into conflict over the past two weeks between the Palestinians and the Israeli paramilitary police. Sometimes, police force Palestinians to leave parts of the site or confine them inside mosques to ensure access for tourists and Jewish worshipers.

Last Friday, Israeli authorities rejected mass Palestinians, especially men, on their way from the West Bank to attend Friday Prayer in Al Aqsa.

Israeli authorities did not respond to questions about how many Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza had applied to visit the mosque this month of Ramadan or how many were denied.

For young men in particular, Aqsa seems out of reach. Ibrahim, a 24-year-old university student from Bethlehem, compared the Israeli license to a golden ticket: “It’s like Willy Wonka, very few people get it.”

Ibrahim, who did not want his surname published, entered Jerusalem legally with a medical permit, then visited Al Aqsa. For him, the trip was not about religion. It was about visiting a place important to Palestinian identity and quietly confronting Israeli occupation.

“You let the police and security guards, but I can get in anyway,” he said. “It’s about asserting our existence.”

Mr. Misk applied for a permit in 2015, while he was in college, and was turned down. He said he was only told that his refusal was “for security reasons.”

The following week, he came in with a smuggler and hasn’t bothered to apply for another permit since.

“It was easier for us to go to Mecca to visit the Kaaba than to go to Al Aqsa here,” he said. “If I want to go to Mecca, I get a visa and I go. But if I want to go to Al Aqsa, I have to take a risk and get over the wall and I could be shot to death.”

One day this month, Mr. Misk tried to enter Israel with some friends through a wooded area and was caught by Israeli soldiers. The soldiers tied their hands behind their backs and let them lie face down on the ground for six hours, he said, before marching back to the West Bank and releasing them.

The next day, he paid a smuggler $15 to get him over the fence.

As Mousa Naser waited his turn recently to widen the wall, dozens of men who had crossed before him were arrested on the other side. As the soldiers took the men away, Mr. Naser and the others sped it away.

But getting over the wall isn’t the only obstacle.

On Wednesday, several Palestinians broke bones after falling from the top of a wall, the Palestinian Red Crescent said.

At checkpoints across East Jerusalem, the Old City and at many entrances to the mosque compound, Israeli police regularly stop people, especially young men, and ask to see their identification. Those without valid documents may be arrested.

Mr. Naser’s strategy is to try to fit in.

“There are things that can tell the police if you are from the West Coast,” said Mr. Naser, a 25-year-old banker. “They can tell from your face if you are scared or not, they can tell from the lines on your forehead. And they know from your shoes. ”

On the West Coast, men prefer jeans and button-down shirts and don’t wear a lot of designer brands, he said. In Jerusalem, style is mainly sneakers, running shoes and countless brands.

“The style of clothing plays an important role in not being attractive,” he says. “It doesn’t provide 100 percent protection but it helps a lot.”

Jamal Karame, 53, said that 13 years ago he was found guilty of harboring a wanted man and spent two years in prison. He denied the allegation.

Since then, he has been unable to obtain a permit to go to Jerusalem, and every time he goes to the checkpoint, he is turned away. So he resorted to sneaking past.

Mr Karame, an electrician from Hebron, said: “This profession needs to give people a chance to live so that people do not have the opposite reaction. “It sucks that we are living under occupation, but you are also preventing me from praying in Al Aqsa.”

As he walked around the block, his fingers moved rapidly over a white prayer beads. On each bead there is a silver engraving of the Kaaba or the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina. He recalls as a child, his father took him to play in the mosque grounds. Back then the journey took less than an hour and there were no checkpoints.

He wished he could bring his six children here easily.

“If we don’t pray in Al Aqsa,” he said, “who will?”

Myra Noveck and Gabby Sobelman contribution report.