Prayers largely peaceful, some youths try hang Hamas flags

Tens of thousands gather at Al-Aqsa as Sunni Muslims celebrate Eid holiday

Festival marking end of Ramadan starts for many in Israel and PA on Friday, while Shiites wait another day; Waqf says 4 million worshippers visited mosque compound over holy month

Palestinians attend Eid al-Fitr holiday celebrations by the Dome of the Rock shrine in the Al Aqsa Mosque compound on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem's Old City, April 21, 2023. (AP Photo/ Mahmoud Illean)
Palestinians attend Eid al-Fitr holiday celebrations by the Dome of the Rock shrine in the Al Aqsa Mosque compound on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem's Old City, April 21, 2023. (AP Photo/ Mahmoud Illean)

Arab Israelis and Palestinians joined large parts of the Muslim world in celebrating the Eid al-Fitr holiday on Friday to mark the end of the fasting month of Ramadan with tens of thousands gathering for prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

Some 50,000 participated in pre-dawn prayers and hundreds of thousands were expected by Friday afternoon, though no figures were released by Israeli authorities. For Palestinian Muslims, worship at the Al-Aqsa Mosque — the third-holiest site in Islam — is a central part of the festival.

Israeli authorities said prayers Friday morning were largely peaceful. However, there was “still a handful of rioters who arrived to disturb and harm their fellow worshipers, to desecrate a holy place and to incite terrorism,” the Foreign Ministry and police said in identical statements published with videos showing several masked youths trying to hang Hamas banners from the walls, while others used ropes to scale the walls and avoid security checks.

Police said that officers entered the site briefly during prayers in order to remove a banner containing a slogan inciting violence that was hung from an arch on the compound. In the past, police waited until prayers concluded in order to remove such banners but National Security Minister reportedly scolded law enforcement for that approach earlier in the week.

Channel 12 reported that a small clash also broke out broke out at the holy site between supporters of the rival Hamas and Fatah Palestinian movements, with activists from the latter group seeking to avenge for an incident that took place earlier in the week during which a young man waving a Fatah flag at the Temple Mount had stones and other objects thrown on him. The incident was capture on someone’s cellphone and subsequently went viral on social media.

Meanwhile, the Waqf, the Jordanian-backed Islamic trust that administers the Al Aqsa Mosque compound on the Temple Mount announced Friday that some four million people had prayed at the site during the month of Ramadan.

The large numbers come despite accusations that Israel was restricting worship at the site and a series of clashes that sparked a surge in regional violence.

The Temple Mount, known to Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif or Noble Sanctuary, is the holiest site for Jews and the third-holiest shrine in Islam.

During the second week of Ramadan there were fierce clashes at the flashpoint site sparked when police entered the mosque after hundreds of Palestinians barricaded themselves inside with explosive devices, rocks and fireworks in order to target Israeli officers and civilians, according to police.

Police managed to overpower the rioters but several people inside captured footage of officers brutally beating and apprehending Palestinians, which went viral on social media and sparked a massive uproar across the globe. Hamas terrorists also responded by firing several barrages of rockets at Israel from both Lebanon and Gaza, leading to Israeli retaliatory airstrikes.

Subsequent prayers at the site were largely peaceful and Israel also barred Jewish visitors from the site for the last 10 days of Ramadan.

Palestinians attend Eid al-Fitr holiday celebrations by the Dome of the Rock shrine in the Al Aqsa Mosque compound on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City, Friday, April 21, 2023. (AP/Mahmoud Illean)

Overnight festive meals and celebrations were held across the Arab towns in Israel and in the West Bank and Gaza. In Ramallah, thousands flocked to the streets for a procession led by scouts and marching bands.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas commuted the sentences of several prisoners to mark the holiday, the official Wafa news agency said, without giving further details.

A Palestinian baker carries a tray of fresh “maamoul”, traditional pastries filled with dates or nuts, on the eve of Eid al-Fitr at the end of Muslim holy month of Ramadan, in Jerusalem on April 20, 2023. (Ahmad Gharabli / AFP)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a video statement wishing “a happy Eid al-Fitr to our brothers and sisters, the Muslim citizens of Israel and to Muslims around the world.”

Netanyahu said he hoped the coming year would see “days of peace and tranquility and expanding the circle of peace.”

Eid al-Fitr celebrations in other parts of the world were also overshadowed by violence, with raging battles for control of Sudan and a deadly stampede in Yemen.

In other parts of the region, the holiday came against the backdrop of reconciliation and rapprochement between former rivals.

The Islamic calendar is lunar and depends on the sighting of the moon — something Muslim religious authorities tend to disagree on. Ramadan sees worshippers fasting daily from dawn to sunset, ending with Eid al-Fitr celebrations.

This year again, the holiday comes amid fighting and devastation, particularly in the Middle East.

In Sudan, the holiday was eclipsed by raging battles between the army and its rival paramilitary force, despite two attempted cease-fires. The fighting since Saturday has killed hundreds of people and wounded thousands.

In Yemen, the Arab world’s most impoverished nation, a stampede late Wednesday at a charitable event in the rebel-held capital of Sanaa killed at least 78 people and injured 77.

Religious authorities in both Sudan and Yemen said they will mark the start of Eid al-Fitr on Friday.

People breaking their Ramadan fast at the end of the last day of the Muslim holy month and the start of the Eid al-Fitr holiday, near the Dome of the Rock at the Aqsa mosque compound on the Temple Mount in the old city of Jerusalem on April 20, 2023. (Ahmad Gharabli / AFP)

In Indonesia, the country with the largest Muslim population worldwide, the second-largest Islamic group, Muhammadiyah — with over 60 million members — said that according to its astronomical calculations, the holiday of Eid al-Fitr starts on Friday. However, the country’s religious affairs minister announced on Thursday that the start of the holiday would fall on Saturday.

In some places, tensions and fighting had calmed. Long-time Mideast rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia agreed last month to restore diplomatic ties after China-brokered negotiations — an ongoing reconciliation that has de-escalated proxy wars in the region.

Saudi officials and Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen recently began talks in Sanaa and during the last days of Ramadan exchanged hundreds of prisoners captured in Yemen’s civil war, which erupted in 2014.

Palestinian Muslims attend Eid al-Fitr prayers, marking the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan, in Gaza City, Friday, April 21, 2023. (AP/Fatima Shbair)

Riyadh also sent its top diplomat to Syria to meet with President Bashar Assad on Tuesday, a significant step towards ending his political isolation and potentially returning the war-torn country to the Arab League.

However, Tehran and Riyadh disagreed on the start of the holiday — for Saudis, Eid al-Fitr would begin Friday while officials in Iran said it starts on Saturday.

The start of the holiday is traditionally based on sightings of the new moon, which vary according to geographic location, while some countries rely on astronomical calculations rather than physical sightings to determine the start of Eid al-Fitr.

United Arab Emirates and Qatar followed Saudi Arabia and announced the holiday would begin for them on Friday, while their Gulf Arab neighbor, Oman, declared that the moon had not been sighted and the holiday would begin on Saturday.

A person checks a telescope while searching for the new crescent moon to mark the start of Eid al-Fitr, at the end of Islam’s holy month of Ramadan, near the Dome of the Rock shrine at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound on the Temple Mount in the old city of Jerusalem on April 20, 2023. (Ahmad Gharabli / AFP)

Iraq’s Sunni authorities announced the holiday would begin Friday, while the country’s top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, set a Saturday start date. The governments of Lebanon and Syria, both in the throes of crippling economic crises, said Friday would mark the beginning of the dayslong holiday.

Indonesia’s Security Minister Mohammad Mahfud called on Muslims to be respectful of each other’s celebrations and asked Muhammadiyah members to have their holiday feasts at home — in consideration of the Muslims who would still be fasting on Friday.

A beautician paints hands with traditional henna in preparation for the upcoming Eid al-Fitr celebrations, in Karachi, Pakistan, Thursday, April 20, 2023. (AP/Fareed Khan)

The country’s roads and highways were gridlocked as millions crammed into trains, ferries, busses and on motorcycles, as they left cities to return to their villages to celebrate with family. The government estimated that more than 123 million travelers were expected to crisscross the vast archipelago that spans 17,000 islands, with about 18 million departing from Jakarta’s greater metropolitan area.

Meanwhile, clerics of Pakistan’s state-backed moon sighting committee announced at a news conference in Islamabad that Eid al-Fitr would be celebrated on Saturday in Pakistan as there were no sightings of the moon there.

Egypt and Jordan said that for them, Eid al-Fitr would begin on Friday. In divided Libya, the religious authorities based in the capital of Tripoli, said it would start on Saturday. In the country’s east, run by a rival administration, authorities marked Friday as the start.

In this aerial view, Muslim worshippers pray on the first day of Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan, at a football stadium in Kuwait City on April 21, 2023. (Photo by Yasser Al-Zayyat / AFP)

In Afghanistan, the head of the Taliban-appointed judiciary, Abdul Hakim Haqqani, also said the holiday would start on Friday.

Most Popular
read more: