The Palestinian Authority (PA) accused Israel of escalating a “systematic” religious conflict due to the increasing raids by Israeli Jewish settlers of Al-Aqsa Mosque, Quds Press reported yesterday.

In a statement, the PA’s foreign ministry said that the Israeli occupation authorities and the ruling right-wing “use the political occasions and religious holidays to expand settlements throughout the whole land of the State of Palestine.”

The ministry said that these occasions are being used as an “incentive” to mobilise more settlers to take part in the desecration of Al-Aqsa Mosque “in order to reinforce the temporal partition of Al-Aqsa Mosque ahead of its spatial partitioning.”

In addition, the ministry accused the Israeli occupation of working to hide the Islamic and Christian appearance of the holy city of Jerusalem, as well as to reinforce the “fake” Talmudic narrative about it “through a wide distortion campaign”.

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This campaign, the PA ministry said, “is based on denying the Palestinians of their historical, religious and legal connection to Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque.”

The PA condemned these “systematic” Israeli campaigns and warned of the “dangerous” consequences of the increasing raids of the holy sites.

More than 330 Israeli Jewish settlers stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque early yesterday as part of a continuous series of raids which began two weeks ago to mark the anniversary of the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem during the 1967 war.