Israel further cuts off occupied West Bank mosque from local worshippers

Israel has tightened restrictions on the Ibrahimi mosque in Hebron in the occupied West Bank – claiming the measures are to protect illegal settlers in the town.

The mosque was the scene of extremist settler Baruch Goldstein’s 1994 massacre of 29 Palestinian worshippers. The atrocity was used by the occupation to further restrict local Muslims’ access to the sacred site, one of Islam’s most important. Israel fenced off the mosque but has now closed additional gates and cut off many of the alternative routes to the mosque. This has forced local people to walk kilometres to gain what access they are allowed, replicating measures imposed on the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. Israel’s fascist ‘security minister’ Itamar Ben Gvir has praised Goldstein’s mass murder and today, 7 April 2026, raided Al-Aqsa mosque while announcing it would be re-opened to extremist settlers.

Israel harassing worshippers

Local resident Aref Jaber told Al Jazeera:

The difficulty of reaching the mosque is compounded by the procedures at the iron and electronic gates installed at its entrances and in its vicinity. We are subjected to searches, detention, and harassment without any justification, and often young men, boys, and even women are arrested.

The occupation had ordered the removal of mosque director Moataz Abu Sneineh and his staff for more than two weeks in January and has begun preventing the call to prayer “dozens of times a month”. It then used its attacks on Iran as an excuse to close the mosque completely for six days from the end of February and continues to limit the numbers who can attend. The site is considered a major Islamic holy site and a national symbol of Palestine, making it a target for Israel’s ethno-fascist leadership that denies the Palestinian people even exists and claims the site as the ‘Cave of the [Jewish] Patriarchs’.

Award-winning human rights activist Issa Amro, who directs the Youth Against Settlements group, said that the situation at the mosque is even more dangerous than al-Aqsa, adding that:

The Jewish area [of the mosque] has been expanded, and recently, residents around the mosque have been living a difficult life due to soldier violence, settler terrorism, the constant closure of barriers, and restrictions on leaving their homes. They live as prisoners in their own homes in fear of settlers and soldiers, and disturbed by the constant gatherings held by settlers in the mosque.

Israel is an apartheid, terror state.

Featured image via the Canary