Sunday marks both Nakba Day and Pesach Sheni (Second Passover), and both Hamas and Jewish Temple Mount activist organizations called for people to visit, setting up a potential clash.
Hamas called on the Palestinian “masses” to travel to the Temple Mount on Sunday in order to “thwart the evil plans of the occupation,” Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem said in a statement published on Saturday.
Sunday is both Nakba Day and Pesach Sheni (Second Passover), where Jews in ancient times would sacrifice the pascal lamb if they were not able to on the usual date.
The “Temple Organizations Staff” posted a flyer on Facebook on Tuesday calling on Jews to visit the site on Sunday, in order to “promote [religious] commandments associated with the Temple.”
“Repeating the call to storm Al-Aqsa will not succeed in changing its Islamic [character], and our people will protect it strongly,” the Hamas statement began.
“The calls of the extremist so-called ‘Zionist Temple groups’ to storm Al-Aqsa Mosque tomorrow, Sunday, commemorating the Nakba, and the occupation authorities’ permission to do so, is a dangerous escalation and a provocation to the feelings of our people and our nation, and leads to a clash that for which the Zionist occupation will bears the full consequences.
“The recurring incursions into Al-Aqsa Mosque are nothing but desperate attempts that will not succeed in imposing a fait accompli and changing the facts of history that Al-Aqsa Mosque was and will remain Palestinian, Arab and Islamic,” the statement continued.
“We call on the masses of our people in Jerusalem, the West Bank and the occupied interior to travel to the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque to thwart the evil plans of the occupation,” it concluded.
Although quiet in recent days, the Temple Mount was the focal point of violent clashes between Palestinians and Israeli security forces during the month of Ramadan, which ended on May 1.
Earlier on Saturday, a Palestinian man named Walid al-Sharif died after being evacuated to Hadassah-University Medical Center in Jerusalem with a skull fracture and severe brain hemorrhage during Ramadan, after clashing with Israeli police.
While the Israel Police said that he had fell and hit his head after throwing rocks at troops, Palestinians say he was hit in the head by a sponge bullet.
The policed demanded an autopsy of the body but the family refused, according to lawyer Muhammad Mahmoud of the Wadi Hilweh Information Center.
As reported by The Jerusalem Post