QALANDIYA CHECKPOINT, West Bank: For many Palestinians, the journey to one of Islam’s most sacred sites on the holiest night of Ramadan begins in a dust-choked, garbage-strewn maelstrom.
Tens of thousands of Palestinian worshippers from across the occupied West Bank on Monday crammed through a military checkpoint leading to Jerusalem to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque for Laylat Al-Qadr, or the “Night of Destiny,” when Muslims believe that the Qur’an was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad centuries ago.
The noisy, sweaty crowds at Qalandiya checkpoint seem chaotic — but there was a system: women to the right; men to the left. Jerusalem residents here, disabled people there. And the grim-looking men stranded at the corner had endured the long wait only to be turned back altogether.
“I’m not political, I’m just devout, so I thought maybe tonight, because of Laylat Al-Qadr, they’d let me in,” said Deia Jamil, a 40-year-old Arabic teacher from the West Bank city of Ramallah.
“But no. ‘Forbidden,’” he said, sinking onto his knees to pray in the dirt lot.
For Palestinian worshippers, praying at the third-holiest site in Islam is a centerpiece of Ramadan. But hundreds of thousands are barred from legally crossing into Jerusalem, with most men under 55 turned away at checkpoints due to Israeli security restrictions. They often resort to perilous means to get to the holy compound during the fasting month of Ramadan.
This year, as in the past, Israel has eased some restrictions, allowing women and young children from the West Bank to enter Jerusalem without a permit. Those between the ages of 45 and 55 who have a valid permit can pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound — one of the most bitterly disputed holy sites on Earth.
Jews revere it as the Temple Mount, home to the biblical Temples, and consider it the holiest site in Judaism. The competing claims are at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and often spill over into violence.
Israel says it is committed to protecting freedom of worship for all faiths and describes the controls on Palestinian worshippers as an essential security measure that keeps attackers out of Israel. Last month, a Palestinian who crossed into Israel from the West Bank village of Nilin opened fire on a crowded street in Tel Aviv, killing one Israeli and wounding two others.
But for Palestinians, the restrictions take a toll.
“I feel completely lost,” said 53-year-old Noureddine Odeh, his backpack sagging off one shoulder. His wife and teenage daughters made it through the checkpoint, leaving him behind. This year — a period of surging violence in the occupied West Bank — Israel raised the age limit for male worshippers and he was no longer eligible. “You’re tugged around, like they’re playing God.”
Israeli authorities did not answer questions about how many Palestinian applications they’d rejected from the West Bank and Gaza. But they said that so far this month, some 289,000 Palestinians — the majority from the West Bank and a few hundred from the Gaza Strip — had visited Jerusalem for prayers.
Earlier this month, Israel announced the start of special Ramadan flights for West Bank Palestinians from the Ramon Airport in southern Israel. In normal times, Palestinians would have to fly from neighboring Jordan. But Monday, days before the end of Ramadan, the Israeli defense agency that handles Palestinian civilian affairs said only that Palestinians “will soon have the option.”
The crowds squeezing through Qalandiya during Laylat Al-Qadr — one of the most important nights of the year, when Muslims seek to have their prayers answered — were so overwhelming that Israeli forces repeatedly shut the barrier. The sudden closures created bottlenecks of people, most of whom had abstained from food and water all day. Medics from the Palestinian Red Crescent said at least 30 people collapse at the checkpoint on a busy Ramadan day.
Their elbows pressed into strangers’ torsos and heads squeezed under armpits, five women studying to be midwives who had never before left the West Bank entertained themselves with fantasies of Jerusalem. “We’ll buy meat and sweets,” squealed 20-year-old Sondos Warasna. “And picnic in the Al-Aqsa courtyard.”
The limestone courtyard, which teems with Palestinian families breaking fast each night after sunset, became roiled by violence earlier this month, when Ramadan overlapped with the Jewish holiday of Passover. Israeli police raided the compound, firing stun grenades and arresting hundreds of Palestinian worshippers who had barricaded themselves inside the mosque with fireworks and stones. The raid, which Israel said was necessary to prevent further violence, outraged Muslims across the world and prompted militants in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip to fire rockets at Israel.
Anger over access to the contested compound was undimmed at Qalandiya. Throngs of Palestinian girls and older men ostensibly permitted to pass were turned back and told they had security bans they never knew about that barred them from Jerusalem. The secretive system — which Palestinians consider a key tool in Israel’s 55-year-old military occupation — left them reeling, struggling to understand why.
A 16-year-old girl from the northern city of Jenin frantically called her parents who had entered Jerusalem without her. A 19-year-old from Ramallah changed her coat and put on sunglasses and lipstick before trying again.
Others found riskier ways to get to the holy compound — scrambling over Israel’s hulking separation barrier or sliding under razor wire.
Abdallah, a young medical student from the southern city of Hebron, clambered up a rickety ladder with six of his friends in the pre-dawn darkness Monday — then slid down a rope on the wall’s other side — so he could make it to Al-Aqsa for Laylat Al-Qadr. They paid a smuggler some $70 each to help them scale the barrier.
“My heart was beating so loud. I was sure soldiers would hear it,” Abdallah said, giving only his first name for fear of reprisals.
The Israeli military has picked up hundreds of Palestinians who sneaked through holes in the separation barrier during Ramadan, it said, adding that forces would “continue to act against the security risk arising from the destruction of the security fence and illegal entry.”
Abdallah said the experience of Jerusalem’s Old City brought him great joy. But soon anxiety set in. Israeli police were everywhere — occasionally stopping young men and asking to see their IDs. He tried to blend in, wearing counterfeit athleisure like many Jerusalemites and smiling to look relaxed.
“It’s a mixed feeling. At any moment I know I could be arrested,” he said from the entrance to the sacred compound. “But our mosque, it makes me feel free.”
For Palestinians, holiest Ramadan night starts at checkpoint
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For Palestinians, holiest Ramadan night starts at checkpoint

- Palestinian worshippers cram through Israeli military checkpoint leading to Jerusalem
- For Palestinian worshippers, praying at the third-holiest site in Islam is a centerpiece of Ramadan
Syria expected to hold parliamentary election in September, official says

DAMASCUS: Syria is expected to hold its first parliamentary election under the new administration in September, the head of the electoral process told state news agency SANA on Sunday.
Voting for the People’s Assembly is expected to take place from September 15 to 20, added the official, Mohammed Taha.
Iraqi police clash with paramilitary fighters who stormed government building

- PMF fighters burst into the building during an administrative meeting, causing panic among staff who alerted police
- Security sources and three employees at the scene said the fighters had wanted to stop the office’s former director from being replaced
BAGHDAD: A gunbattle erupted in Iraq’s capital on Sunday between police and fighters from a state-sanctioned paramilitary force that includes Iran-backed groups, killing at least one police officer and leading to the arrest of 14 fighters, authorities said.
The clash broke out in Baghdad’s Karkh district after a group of fighters from the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) stormed an Agriculture Ministry building as a new director was being sworn in, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.
The PMF, known in Arabic as Hashd Al-Shaabi, is an umbrella group of mostly Shiite paramilitary factions that was formally integrated into Iraq’s state security forces and includes several groups aligned with Iran.
According to the Interior Ministry, the PMF fighters burst into the building during an administrative meeting, causing panic among staff who alerted police.
Security sources and three employees at the scene said the fighters had wanted to stop the office’s former director from being replaced.
A statement from the Joint Operations Command, which reports directly to Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani, confirmed that the detainees were PMF members and had been referred to the judiciary. At least one police officer was killed and nine others were wounded, police and hospital sources said.
Sudani ordered the formation of a committee to investigate the incident, the command said.
The arrested fighters belong to “PMF brigades 45 and 46,” the statement added. Both brigades are affiliated with Kataib Hezbollah, an Iran-aligned Iraqi armed group, according to Iraqi security officials and sources within the PMF.
Jordan and UAE carry out humanitarian airdrops over Gaza as aid efforts intensify

- Royal Jordanian Air Force and UAE Air Force C-130 aircraft joint operation airlifted 25 tons of food and basic necessities into Strip
GAZA: The Jordan Armed Forces and the UAE carried out three humanitarian airdrops on Sunday to deliver vital food and supplies to several areas across the Gaza Strip, the Jordan News Agency reported.
Using Royal Jordanian Air Force and UAE Air Force C-130 aircraft, the joint operation airlifted 25 tons of food and basic necessities amid worsening humanitarian conditions in the war-torn enclave.
The operation forms part of Jordan’s ongoing relief efforts, conducted in coordination with the Jordan Hashemite Charity Organisation and international partners, to support the Palestinian population and ease the impact of the conflict, JNA added.
The UAE also said on Saturday that it would resume aid drops over Gaza at once, citing the “critical” humanitarian situation in the blockaded territory, where aid groups have warned of mass starvation.
“The humanitarian situation in Gaza has reached a critical and unprecedented level,” UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan said in a post on X.
“We will ensure essential aid reaches those most in need, whether through land, air or sea. Air drops are resuming once more, immediately.”
Since the outbreak of war, the Jordanian military has completed 127 airdrops, in addition to 267 conducted in cooperation with other nations.
While airdrops offer a rapid way to deliver emergency aid to areas that are otherwise inaccessible, officials stress that ground convoys remain the most effective and prioritized method of delivering humanitarian assistance.
To date, Jordan has sent 181 land convoys into Gaza in coordination with the JHCO, the World Food Programme, and World Central Kitchen. These convoys have delivered a total of 7,932 trucks loaded with aid.
UN aid chief welcomes ‘humanitarian pauses’ in Gaza

- OCHA says UN teams in place to ramp up deliveries into the Palestinian territory ‘as soon as they are allowed to do so’
- OCHA notes constraints imposed by the Israeli authorities had hampered humanitarians’ ability to respond
GENEVA: The United Nations’ aid chief welcomed Israel’s announcement Sunday of secure land routes into Gaza for humanitarian convoys, and said the UN would try to reach as many starving people as possible.
“Welcome announcement of humanitarian pauses in Gaza to allow our aid through,” UN emergency relief coordinator Tom Fletcher said on X.
“In contact with our teams on the ground who will do all we can to reach as many starving people as we can in this window.”
Fletcher’s UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warned Friday that conditions on the ground in Gaza were “already catastrophic and deteriorating fast.”
“The starvation crisis is deepening,” it said, warning that hunger and malnutrition increase the risk of illnesses, and adding that the consequences can quickly “turn deadly.”
It said that “the trickle of supplies that are making it into the Strip are nowhere near adequate to address the immense needs.”
OCHA said UN teams were in place to ramp up deliveries into the Palestinian territory “as soon as they are allowed to do so.”
“If Israel opens the crossings, lets fuel and equipment in, and allows humanitarian staff to operate safely, the UN will accelerate the delivery of food aid, health services, clean water and waste management, nutrition supplies, and shelter materials,” it said.
OCHA said constraints imposed by the Israeli authorities had hampered humanitarians’ ability to respond.
It said that on Thursday, for example, out of 15 attempts to coordinate humanitarian movements inside Gaza, four were “outright denied,” with another three impeded.
One was postponed, and two others had to be canceled, meaning only five missions went ahead.
On Friday OCHA issued an aid delivery plan in the event of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli army says two soldiers killed in south Gaza

- Israeli military sources said they were killed when their armored vehicle exploded in the city of Khan Yunis
JERUSALEM: Two Israeli soldiers were killed in combat in southern Gaza on Sunday, the military said, a day after confirming another soldier had died of wounds sustained last week.
“We have lost three young heroes — some of our finest — who gave their lives for the security of our state and the return of all our hostages,” Defense Minister Israel Katz said on X.
The two soldiers, aged 20 and 22, served in the Golani Infantry Brigade’s 51st Battalion.
Israeli military sources said they were killed when their armored vehicle exploded in the city of Khan Yunis.
Military correspondents from several Israeli media outlets said the blast was caused by an improvised explosive device detonated by a militant who emerged from a tunnel.
An investigation was underway.
The Israeli military says 462 soldiers have been killed since the start of its ground offensive in Gaza on October 27, 2023.
Israel launched its Gaza military campaign after Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack, which resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
The Israeli campaign has killed 59,733 Palestinians, mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.