“They started with the Ibrahimi Mosque today, and al-Aqsa Mosque will be next. Who will stop them?”1 This question resonates among Palestinians in Jerusalem, especially in the Old City, where al-Aqsa Mosque is a fundamental part of everyday life. Residents are concerned about the Israeli government’s ongoing plans and active efforts to seize control of al-Aqsa Mosque. The anxiety is palpable.

Hajj Abdul Aziz Abdullah, a 77-year-old resident of Haret al-Sa‘diyya, told Jerusalem Story: “We are the first line of defense, and we will stop them as much as possible.” The elderly Jerusalemite spoke of the resoluteness of the Old City’s Muslim community. “While there are limits to our capabilities against Israel’s massive military machine, we have successfully resisted in the past, such as during the Bab al-Rahma uprising, the electronic gates uprising, and the al-Aqsa [Second] Intifada, when many Jerusalemites were martyred.”

Hajj Abdullah, a former Arabic teacher, rested his hands on his cane as he sits near the Cotton Merchants’ Gate, the Dome of the Rock shining majestically behind him. “Our hope in God is immense; we pray we do not reach the dark day that al-Aqsa is in imminent danger. If that day comes, all the people of Jerusalem, young and old, men and women, will rise to defend it.”

At this point, Khalil Mohsen, a 24-year-old who has a shop near Bab al-Hadid, interjected after having just performed the afternoon prayer at al-Aqsa Mosque:

His teacher reassured him: “Do not despair of God’s mercy. God will grant relief, my son.”

Sheikh Muhammad Hussein, the Mufti of Jerusalem and preacher at al-Aqsa Mosque, shares his concerns about the situation at the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron’s Old City. In mid-July 2025, Israeli authorities announced that administrative control over the mosque would be transferred from the Palestinian Ministry of Religious Endowments (Awqaf) and the Hebron Municipality to the religious council of the nearby Israeli Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba.3 The decision was made secretly without informing the Waqf Department authorities directly and effectively stripped the Waqf Department of its historic authority over the holy site, radically altering the historic Status Quo. The new council promptly began working to expand space for Jewish prayer at the site and making structural changes.4 Currently the Old City is under complete Israeli military control, with 1,500 Israeli soldiers guarding the 400 settlers who have forcibly inserted themselves there while driving out many of the tens of thousands of local Palestinian residents. Those who remain must exist within a maze of checkpoints, barriers, surveillance cameras, and swarming military troops.5

Sheikh Hussein fears similar actions could be taken against the al-Aqsa Mosque, though he remains hopeful: “God is with us, and God willing, no harm will befall Al-Aqsa Mosque.”6

On July 17, 2025, the director of the Ibrahimi Mosque, Moataz Abu Sneineh, warned in an interview with Middle East Eye that these developments could be “a test to measure the Palestinian reaction before taking any [further] official steps.”7

The Ibrahimi Mosque, known as the Noble Sanctuary of Abraham, is named after the prophet Ibrahim (Abraham), “the Friend of God.” It is recognized as the oldest continuously used holy building in history and the fourth holiest site in Islam, following the mosques in Mecca and Medina and al-Aqsa Mosque. It is the second holiest site for Muslims in historic Palestine. Before Israel’s establishment, al-Aqsa Mosque and the Ibrahimi Mosque were closely related or even twinned, such that people often came from elsewhere to visit both in sequence. Sheikh Mazen Ahram, who meets with his followers every Friday in a Sufi corner of al-Aqsa Mosque, emphasizes the deep connection between the al-Aqsa and Ibrahimi Mosques:

To Jews, the site is known as the Tomb or Cave of the Patriarchs or the Cave of Machpela. It is also the second holiest place for Jews after what they refer to as the Temple Mount (al-Aqsa Mosque) in Jerusalem. The biblical figures Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, and Leah are all believed to be buried there.9

Upon its occupation of the West Bank in 1967, the Israeli government allowed settlers to establish settlements around Hebron (see Settlements). Subsequently, with the support of successive Israeli governments—particularly the various Labor governments, which first legalized settlement activity in the West Bank even before the extremist Likud took power—settlers, aided by the army, stormed the city of Hebron and its commercial center, seizing properties. They surrounded the Ibrahimi Mosque, which has been subjected to repeated attacks by settlers aiming to convert it into a Jewish temple, all under the protection of the army.

On February 25, 1994, during dawn prayer, an extremist Israeli American settler, Baruch Goldstein, attacked Palestinian worshippers in the mosque, ultimately leaving 30 dead and 125 wounded.10

Following the massacre, Israeli forces seized 63 percent of the mosque and converted it into a Jewish synagogue, leaving only the remaining 37 percent accessible to Muslims.11 They divided its interior into sections using barriers and fortified iron gates and established military outposts for surveillance inside and around the mosque. They also eventually erected more than 22 checkpoints, including 6 main barriers, around it that impede access for Muslim worshippers.12 These days, Palestinian visitors are continually harassed.

In 2005, settlers pitched a tent in the mosque courtyard and began using it as a site of worship. Gradually they enlarged it and turned it into a synagogue. Things came to a head when they declared their intent to build a roof over it in mid-2025, which would mean covering the only open space at the site. On September 15, 2025, authorities issued a confiscation order for the courtyard of the mosque.

Subsequent measures included hundreds of bans on the call to prayer (769 in 2025 alone), erecting a menorah and Israeli flags on the mosque, holding loud and noisy Jewish celebrations and prayers (including shouting, chanting, and cursing) in their areas of the site, closing the mosque to Muslims on religious occasions, refusing to open its eastern gate during Ramadan, Eid al-Fitr, and Eid al-Adha, blocking entry to the mosque during Jewish holidays, digging in the mosque’s courtyards, forcibly confiscating land and installing an electric elevator for settlers, installing Israeli alarm systems, refusing to return the mosque to Muslim worshippers during holidays, locking its doors, and expanding military checkpoints around it.13

In addition to their shared historic, legal, and religious significance to Palestinians, the two mosques share political realities under Israeli occupation. In 2019, Israeli journalist Amira Hass wrote an article in Haaretz titled “The Danger of Hebronization.” In it, she asserted: “The Palestinian fear of a Hebronization of Jerusalem’s Old City in general and Al-Aqsa in particular rests on solid grounds: the same religious zealotry and real estate appetite, the same step-by-step methodology and the same armed secular-nationalist Jewish support, which is only growing.”14

With the transfer of authority over the Ibrahimi Mosque to the Kiryat Arba religious council, Jewish control over the site now reaches 100 percent, effectively banning Muslims from decision-making over their own holy site and even from accessing it altogether.15

Jerusalem, unlike Hebron, is not isolated. Despite this, anxiety hangs over the streets of the city; if extremist factions in Israel remain in power, it is only a matter of time before one of their many incursions into the al-Aqsa Mosque and their assaults on Palestinian worshippers results in bloodshed.

Back in al-Aqsa, Sheikh Ahram, speaking in a calm and reverent tone before a group of eager worshippers in a small room known as al-Zawiya al-‘Alawiyya, warns, “Israel will not cease its attempts to control al-Aqsa Mosque, just as it has done before.” He acknowledges that while the situation at the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron is concerning, al-Aqsa is a global Islamic symbol. Any radical changes there could ignite a broader conflict.

Furthermore, al-Aqsa Mosque is part of the Jordanian Islamic Waqf and under Hashemite Custodianship. Israel is aware that officially breaking this Status Quo would irk its allies and potentially provoke an international crisis (see What Is the Status Quo?).

Hatem Abdel Qader, a Jerusalem activist, former Palestinian government minister, and head of the Islamic-Christian Committee for the Support of Jerusalem, asserts: “Al-Aqsa Mosque is certainly under fire. Violations and incursions by extremist Jews are no longer isolated incidents; they have become organized and systematic, involving all components of the Israeli government.”16 This, Abdel Qader explains, “reflects a clear strategic shift in Israeli policy towards al-Aqsa.”

“However,” he adds:

This view is echoed by Professor Yitzhak Reiter, head of the Middle East and Islamic Studies Association in Israel (MEISAI), a lecturer at Al-Qasemi Academic College of Education, and author of several books on al-Aqsa Mosque. Reiter expresses doubt that Israeli officials will attempt to do to al-Aqsa Mosque what they did to the Ibrahimi Mosque, as the US administration will not allow it.

This does not mean, however, that the extremists in the Israeli government will not attempt a takeover of the holy site. On the contrary, they will continue to push for it, though implementing their incendiary policies will prove difficult.