AL-QUDS, PALESTINOW.COM — The Aqsa Mosque and its walls have become threatened with collapse, partially or completely, at any moment because of Israel’s network of underground tunnels, a local official warned.
The southern wall of the Mosque, in particular, has become suspended in the air with no foundations and vulnerable to collapse after the Israeli occupation authority (IOA) built a major tunnel beneath Silwan and inaugurated it recently, member of the Silwan land defense committee Fakhri Abu Diyab noted in recent press remarks.
Abu Diyab said that the IOA embarked over long years on building tunnels beneath the Aqsa Mosque and the Old City of Jerusalem and removing soil and rocks from under their foundations, which led the Mosque as well as many real estate, homes and roads to sustain cave-ins and fissures.
The last tunnel project in Silwan, he warned, is practically aimed at carrying out the Israeli plan to destroy parts of the Aqsa Mosque, pointing out that this project was announced and planned in 2005 and later Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu approved and launched it in 2010.
A few days ago, the IOA and the Elad society (a settler group active in Judaizing the holy city) opened a tunnel under Silwan in Jerusalem as part of the Judaization project called the pilgrim road of the temple mount.
The US administration, which supports Israel’s control of Jerusalem, delegated its envoy Jason Greenblatt and ambassador David Friedman to attend the inauguration of the tunnel, where Friedman provocatively used a sledgehammer to knock down a specially built wall to announce the opening of the new underground passage.
