In a scene that revives the darkest nightmares of the conflict, the blessed courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque are no longer merely a place of worship. They have been turned into an open battlefield — the very heart of the political and demographic struggle over Jerusalem.
As the cycle of major Jewish holidays in the month of Tishri begins, pressing questions resurface: how are these religious occasions transformed into tools of political mobilisation and instruments to impose new realities on the ground? The backdrop is the ongoing genocidal war on Gaza since the “Al-Aqsa Flood” resistance operation two years ago, which provides the cover for drastic changes in Jerusalem.
Rituals of National Mobilisation
This year’s holidays are unlike those before them. The war on Gaza — framed by Israeli officials as an existential “war of elimination” against the Palestinian people — is being used as a thick smokescreen to reshape Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa. This project is directly sponsored by the most extreme far-right government in Israel’s history, spearheaded by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has made the Talmudic desecration of Al-Aqsa his defining political promise.
The Tishri season — beginning with the Hebrew New Year (Rosh Hashanah), followed by Yom Kippur, Sukkot, and ending with Simchat Torah in 2025 — has become a decisive battleground for the identity of Al-Aqsa and the Old City. These Jewish rituals are openly employed as political instruments to consolidate Israeli sovereignty.
The season begins on 22–23 September with Rosh Hashanah, marked by collective calls for large-scale stormings of Al-Aqsa. These incursions are accompanied by the ritual blowing of the shofar (ram’s horn) at the gates and within the courtyards. In Zionist tradition, every blast of the shofar signals a declaration of sovereignty — it was sounded during Israel’s occupation of Sinai in 1956, and again in Al-Aqsa and the Buraq Wall plaza after the 1967 occupation.
For them, repeating the shofar in Al-Aqsa symbolises the “end of Islamic time” and the beginning of a so-called “Jewish era”.
The first ten days of the Hebrew year, known as the “Days of Repentance”, are traditionally reserved for fasting and self-denial. But religious Zionists have politicised them into days of incursions, with settlers entering Al-Aqsa dressed in white “atonement garments” — clothing associated with the biblical “priestly class”. This is seen as an attempt to materialise the imagery of priests inside the mosque, paving the way for the mythical “Third Temple”.
The provocations escalate during Yom Kippur (1–2 October), with attempts to introduce the ritual of “chicken atonement” sacrifices near Al-Aqsa — a direct challenge to Islamic sovereignty over the sanctuary.
During Sukkot (6–13 October), settlers erect ritual booths at Al-Aqsa’s gates and attempt to perform ceremonies with the “Four Species” (etrog, palm frond, myrtle, and willow), converting the Old City into a ritualistic zone under Israeli security control.
The culmination comes on Simchat Torah (14–15 October) — a day of dancing, singing, and drinking in Jewish tradition. Settlers seek to bring Torah scrolls into Al-Aqsa and circle them around its courtyards — a symbolic act aimed at entrenching “Torah sovereignty” in defiance of Al-Aqsa’s historic and legal Islamic identity.
Incursions and Rituals to Impose New Realities
The most blatant provocations come from extremist settler organisations such as the Temple Mount Faithful, who not only storm Al-Aqsa but also openly perform Talmudic rituals simulating the fabled “Temple sacrifices”. This brazen violation of the status quo established in 1967 now enjoys full state sponsorship.
Ben-Gvir, in May 2024, introduced new police rules obliging Israeli forces to protect public Torah rituals inside Al-Aqsa. In July 2025, he went further, forcing police to allow settlers to hold mass dances and celebrations in the sanctuary, effectively transforming it into both a social and religious space for Zionist settlers.
Among the key practices are:
- Blowing the shofar inside Al-Aqsa, promoted as a step toward reviving animal sacrifices.
- Prostration rituals — full-body Talmudic prostration, with priestly blessings, menorah displays, and symbolic or actual blood rituals.
- Raising Israeli flags and chanting the national anthem “Hatikvah” inside the mosque courtyards, turning incursions into displays of sovereignty.
According to settler organisation Beyadenu (“Al-Aqsa Is in Our Hands”), the scale of incursions has skyrocketed since the Gaza war.
- In 2023, around 50,098 settlers stormed Al-Aqsa.
- In 2024, the number reached 49,243 by November, but with an unprecedented shift towards louder, public rituals.
- During Tishri 2024 alone, there were over 6,422 incursions in Sukkot — an 11% rise from the previous year.
- In 2025, before Tishri even began, more than 54,231 incursions were recorded by August — the highest ever. On Tisha B’Av (9 August) alone, 3,527 settlers entered in one day, breaking all records.
These figures prove a deliberate campaign to normalise Zionist rituals in Al-Aqsa under political cover.
Temporal and Spatial Division Under the Shadow of War
While Gaza endures two years of relentless genocide, and wars rage in Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Yemen, and even the aggression on Doha, Netanyahu’s government presses ahead with its long-term strategy of “temporal and spatial division” of Al-Aqsa — replicating what Israel imposed on the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron.
- Temporal division: granting Jews exclusive hours inside Al-Aqsa, particularly during holidays, while barring Muslims. This normalises the concept of “separate prayer times”.
- Spatial division: settlers seek to carve out areas like the Maghariba Gate plaza for permanent Jewish use, masking them as “public parks” or ritual zones.
Researcher Ziad Abhis explains that Zionism now weaponises biblical rituals as colonial tools to dismantle Al-Aqsa’s Islamic identity, paving the way for its conversion into a “shared shrine” and ultimately a full-fledged temple.
This trajectory intensified after Trump’s rise in 2017, when religious Zionism gained political power. From the 2017 electronic gates uprising, Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the repeated assaults on Bab al-Rahma, the 2021 Sword of Jerusalem battle, and the 2023 Ramadan i’tikaf confrontations, all the way to the Al-Aqsa Flood of 2023 — Jerusalem has remained the symbolic cornerstone of Israel’s “final solution project”.
Implications for Jerusalem’s Future
The spectacle of “Talmudic rituals” in Al-Aqsa is not isolated; it is part of a broader Zionist plan to Judaise Jerusalem and the West Bank under Netanyahu’s extremist coalition.
Political analyst Abdullah Al-Aqrabawi explains that Jewish religious holidays have been politicised into nationalist rallies that fuel settler identity, with Al-Aqsa reduced to a playground for Ben-Gvir and Temple groups. These rituals reproduce the Zionist narrative that ties modern Jews to the mythical “glory of Solomon’s Temple” in Jerusalem.
Netanyahu’s government, propped up by Ben-Gvir and other far-right partners, now offers these acts full state protection — embedding them into election campaigns and daily governance. The ultimate aim: make life unbearable for Palestinians in Jerusalem through demolition of homes, revocation of residency IDs, crippling taxes, bans on family reunification, and continuous Al-Aqsa assaults — all to empty the city of its Arab-Islamic soul.
Abhis warns that Zionism sees Al-Aqsa’s dismantling as a direct military goal, not a gradual project. Thus, even as some European states offer symbolic “recognition of Palestine”, Israel accelerates annexation of Jerusalem and the West Bank, and pushes to reinvent the Palestinian Authority as a network of collaborators stripped of political legitimacy.
Meanwhile, Western powers continue their complicity — arming Israel, maintaining trade, and avoiding real sanctions — despite their direct partnership in the genocide of Gaza.
Conclusion
The Zionist exploitation of the Tishri rituals in Al-Aqsa is not about faith but about power. Under the cloak of religion, Israel pursues the erasure of Al-Aqsa’s Islamic identity, the Judaization of Jerusalem, and the expulsion of its native Palestinian inhabitants.
Yet, history has proven time and again: Jerusalem cannot be stripped of its Islamic character. Despite massacres, desecrations, and relentless schemes, the steadfastness of the Palestinian people and the wider Muslim Ummah ensures that every attempt to “end Islamic time” in Al-Aqsa will fail.
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