Settlers walk in the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in the old city of Jerusalem on 2 July 2026 [Getty]
Israeli authorities have banned the grand mufti of Jerusalem from entering the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound for one week.
Sheikh Muhammad Hussein was arrested by Israeli forces after he delivered his sermon during Fridays prayers on 10 July, the Jerusalem Governorate said in a post on Facebook.
Authorities later released him and served him with a one-week ban from entering the compound, it added.
The New Arab has reached out to the Jerusalem Governorate and the Israeli police for comment.
The incident is the latest in a string of Israeli measures targeting Muslim and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem.
Israeli raids at Al-Aqsa – Islam’s third-holiest site – have surged under the far-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in violation of the decades-old status quo.
Arrangements introduced by Israel after the 1967 war left the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf in charge of administering the compound, with Muslim prayer there and Jewish worship directed instead to the Western Wall.
In practice, however, this arrangement has been increasingly eroded. Since 2022, Israeli authorities have allowed far-right Jewish extremists to conduct regular prayers inside the compound and have detained the grand mufti on multiple occasions.
In January, Netanyahu backed moves to loosen restrictions on Jewish access to the site, insisting that these steps do not violate the existing arrangements.
The push to allow Jewish prayer has been led by far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has regularly participated in settler incursions into the compound.
Incursions at Al-Aqsa are taking place at a time of record settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank, a sharp rise in settler violence and accelerating Palestinian displacement.
More than 1,100 Palestinians have been killed since October 2023 and tens of thousands have been forced from their homes under what rights groups say is a state policy of ethnic cleansing.
