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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Julian Borger and Emma Graham-Harrison in Jerusalem

‘Al-Aqsa is a detonator’: six-decade agreement on prayer at Jerusalem holy site collapses

A line of Palestinian Muslim men stand with their hands folded in front of their bodies as they pray outside the mosque compound. It is dark and the stone buildings are illuminated behind them.
Palestinian Muslim worshippers banned from entering al-Aqsa mosque compound pray outside at the end of the first day of Ramadan. Photograph: John Wessels/AFP/Getty Images

A six-decade agreement governing Muslim and Jewish prayer at Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site has “collapsed” under pressure from Jewish extremists backed by the Israeli government, experts have warned.

A series of arrests of Muslim caretaker staff, bans on access for hundreds of Muslims, and escalating incursions by radical Jewish groups culminated this week in the arrest of an imam of al-Aqsa mosque and an Israeli police raid during evening prayers on the first night of Ramadan.

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