28 years since the Ibrahimi Mosque massacre, the Israeli occupation continues its crimes

Occupied Jerusalem (ST): On the dawn of Friday 25 February 1994 corresponding to the fifteenth of Ramadan, the terrorist settler Baruch Goldstein stormed the Ibrahimi Mosque in the city of Hebron in the West Bank, under the protection of the occupation forces. 29 of them were martyred and dozens were wounded in one of the most heinous massacres committed by the occupation against the Palestinian people.

In order to reap the largest number of innocent Palestinian lives, the occupation forces closed the doors of the campus to prevent the worshipers from leaving and prevented paramedics and those coming from outside the campus from reaching its yards to rescue the wounded.

Following the massacre, demonstrations swept the city of Hebron and all the cities and towns of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the 1948 occupied Palestinian territories. The occupation forces suppressed them with bullets, and the number of martyrs rose to 60 and the injured to hundreds.

At the same time, the Israeli occupation took advantage of the massacre to implement its plan to displace Palestinians from the Old City of Hebron, as it closed the Ibrahimi Mosque and the Old City for six months and seized 60% of the area of the Haram to be permitted by settlers. It also intensified its military barriers in the vicinity of the Haram, installed electronic gates at its entrances, and closed all roads leading to it in the face of the Palestinians, with the exception of one road, which has strict procedures.

In addition, the occupation closed the Hisba market, Khan Al-Khalil, Shaheen, Al-Sahla Street and Al-Shuhada Street, which is the main artery and the nerve of life for Palestinians in the city, which led to the closure of 1,800 shops in the Old City, thus separating it from its surroundings and accelerating the implementation of its plans to Judaize it and set up six settlement outposts on Palestinian lands in it.

Despite the brutality of the occupation, international reactions were limited to formal statements of condemnation without any practical action to hold it accountable. On March 14, 1994, the UN Security Council, in Resolution No. 904, contented itself with establishing the Temporary International Mission in Hebron (TIEF) to document the crimes of the occupation and its settlers against the Palestinians and called for measures to be taken to ensure protecting them in all the occupied territories. However, the occupation obstructed the mission’s exercise of its specific tasks, and at the beginning of 2019 refused to renew its work, and the United States at that time prevented the issuance of a statement in the Security Council condemning the occupation for this behavior.

K.Q.