Op-ed: US-Israeli “plot” to annex Jerusalem, Western Wall belongs to Palestinians, Jewish history is “forgeries”
Op-ed by Omar Hilmi Al-Ghoul, regular columnist for the official PA daily
Headline: "The defeat of the colonialist at the Gate of Mercy"
"The Gate of Mercy is one of the main and most beautiful gates of the Al-Aqsa Mosque… In 2003, the Zionist colonialist forces closed it again, and recently the Israeli occupation security forces, in cooperation with the herds of colonialists and the settlement associations, have attempted to take control of the gate and its surroundings for colonialist purposes (refers to Israel closing a compound near the Gate of Mercy after the Jordanian Waqf reopened it in violation of a court order; see note below –Ed.)…
However, the Israeli preparations for choosing the place and time to check the pulse of the street has failed 100 percent… and once again the Jerusalem public has proven its firm and solid stance against the Israeli-American plot to annex the eternal Palestinian capital [Jerusalem], and refused to allow them this, regardless of what tools of violence and organized international terror they use. This is due to their (i.e., Arab residents of Jerusalem) belief in their historical rights to the most beautiful city [Jerusalem], and primarily the Holy Basin and the Western Wall – the Al-Buraq Wall – that nobody will take from them, and no intelligent person can cooperate with all of the false Israeli libels and forgeries, which have been negated by historical documents and facts and the decisions of the international bodies."
February 2019 Temple Mount clashes – Muslim riots broke out on the Temple Mount starting Feb. 18, 2019, after the Israeli police closed a compound near the Gate of Mercy after the Jordanian Waqf had violated an Israeli court order by reopening the compound the previous week. The compound was ordered sealed in 2017 given that it was managed by the banned Islamic Movement in Israel and used for illegal construction and antiquities destruction.
The Al-Buraq Wall - Islam's Prophet Muhammad is said to have ridden during his Night Journey from Mecca to "al aqsa mosque", i.e., "the farthest mosque" (Quran, Sura 17), and there tied his miraculous flying steed named Al-Buraq to a "stone" or a "rock." (Jami` at-Tirmidhi, Book 47, Hadith 3424). In the 1920's, Arab Mufti Haj Amin Al-Husseini decided to identify the Western Wall of the Temple in Jerusalem as that "rock" or "stone," and since then Muslims refer to the Western Wall as the "Al-Buraq Wall."