JERUSALEM: Al-Aqsa mosque complex will be closed on Friday, the government announced Wednesday after an accumulation in COVID-19 cases.
As the virus was accumulating in Israel and the Palestinian territories, the Waqf authority held an emergency meeting with fitness officials.
Waqf members will “suspend access to the faithful from Friday afternoon (September 18) for an era of 3 weeks. “
“We expect citizens to perform this procedure to maintain their fitness and well-being,” Waqf member Hatem Abdel Qader told AFP.
The closure coincides with a three-week close imposed through Israel, which controls entrances to the resort.
The call to prayer will continue to resonate in Jerusalem’s Old City, Qader said, while Waqf workers will be able to pray at the site.
Jordan is the father of the complex, for Muslims like Haram al-Sharif, or sacred sanctuary, and as the Temple Mount through the Jews.
This is just the moment when the Waqf has had to close the complex since Israel occupied East Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War.
Israel has in the past blocked access to the site of the flashpoint, which is in the midst of a state’s Palestinian aspirations.
The Waqf closed the complex at the beginning of the pandemic in March, when radical closures disrupted devout life in a way noted in centuries.
The Israeli government reported approximately 167,000 cases of coronavirus, with 1,147 deaths.
In the occupied West Bank, another 214 people have died from the virus and Palestinian authorities have reported more than 30,200 cases.