Beyond the Numbers: The Real Scope of Al-Aqsa Incursions

Less than two weeks after the end of the Jewish holiday season, extremist Temple groups, backed by Israeli occupation forces, began widening the entrance of the settler pathway to the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque outside the Mughrabi Gate (Bab al-Maghariba). The Israeli occupation has retained the keys to this gate since seizing East Jerusalem in 1967, and has used it to facilitate settler entries into the compound since 2003.

This is no passing development, nor should it be treated as one. The immediate assumption following such news is that the expansion aims to accommodate larger waves of intruders in upcoming seasons. While partially true—given that this year’s Sukkot recorded a historic high of over 9,000 settlers storming the site, up from around 7,000 last year—the full picture goes deeper. In total, the number of incursions across Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot combined surged past 11,400 settlers, according to documented reports.

Yet these figures—vital as they are—do not tell the whole story. In fact, fixating on the headcount alone, as much of the media coverage surrounding the mosque often does, obscures the season’s most dangerous shift: not how many broke in, but what they did once inside.

Al-Aqsa Incursions: Rituals Eclipse Settler Numbers

This year, the intruders did not wait to reach the mosque's eastern sector—which has evolved into their primary focal point in recent years. Instead, they initiated open communal prayers from the very moment they set foot inside. Collective prayers and gatherings spread along the entire incursion route and across the stone terraces (mastabas), reaching the perimeter of the Bab al-Rahma prayer hall. Settlers staged singing and dancing circles, entered the compound carrying prayer books, clad in religious vestments and shirts emblazoned with Temple movement slogans, and smuggled in phylacteries (tefillin). They even left the botanical offerings associated with Sukkot resting on the mosque's stones in the eastern area. As for the shofar (ram's horn), it was blown inside the sacred compound 30 times on September 13 alone.

The sheer provocation of this spectacle is undeniable: settlers openly performing the full suite of their festival rituals inside the holy site as though it were already a standing temple, turning the eastern sector of Al-Aqsa into a de facto synagogue. This directly aligns with the priorities outlined ahead of the holiday season by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir—who explicitly targeted the blowing of the shofar, the donning of tefillin, opening the compound to incursions on Saturdays, and the ultimate restoration of the Temple as the end goal. In this season alone, two of those objectives have already materialized: the shofar and the tefillin.

Extremist Temple groups understand this reality all too well, viewing it as a tangible triumph. This sentiment was voiced plainly by Elisha Wolfson, the self-styled rabbi of the so-called 'Temple Mount Yeshiva'—which effectively operates from within Al-Aqsa. In a recent video address, Wolfson proclaimed that the 'real victory' lies inside the compound itself through constructing the Temple and establishing a synagogue there. This is the very same figure who boasted roughly three months ago that the site now witnesses communal singing, prayers, and prostration—whereas just six years ago, even silent prayer was ground for immediate detention.

This rhetoric exposes the core doctrine of these factions. While they certainly do not discount sheer numbers—settler saturation carries ideological weight as a theological 'sign' to hasten divine promises—headcounts serve merely as a vehicle to saturate the grounds with rituals. These rituals, in turn, function to treat Al-Aqsa as a functioning temple in the present day, long before any physical structure is erected on the ground. In essence, the objective at this stage is the non-physical, ideological consecration of the Temple—and precisely therein lies the danger.

Mughrabi Gate: Why the Incursion Pathway Is Being Expanded

It is precisely through this lens that the widening of the Mughrabi Gate pathway must be understood. Sukkot is one of the three biblical pilgrimage festivals tied to the Temple, and the sanctuary being ideologically revived today demands unhindered access for its 'pilgrims.' It is hardly a coincidence that Temple groups have had this infrastructure project on their agenda since at least 2022, when they announced discussions with Israeli officials to dismantle the earthen ramp and wooden bridge at Mughrabi Gate, replacing them with a permanent, wide bridge tailored to accommodate the surging scale of incursions.

Herein lies the critical blind spot of the media, which still largely covers developments at Al-Aqsa through a daily numerical tally. This metric inadvertently plays directly into the hands of Temple groups. Headcounts fluctuate; a lull in numbers could easily dupe the public into believing the danger has receded, even as the rituals themselves become permanently entrenched inside the mosque.

Compounding the crisis, the occupation has engineered an information blackout this season by barring journalists and activists from entering the compound. As a result, settler-generated footage and self-reported statistics have largely supplanted the ground-level documentation of Palestinian Mourabiteen, the Islamic Waqf, and other institutions now systematically prevented from monitoring the reality on the ground.

Al-Aqsa and Jerusalemites: Crackdowns Beyond the Incursions

The Israeli occupation government is advancing this same trajectory from another angle, systematically coercing Jerusalemites into accommodating a new reality imposed by force and incremental encroachment. This policy was laid bare on Sunday, October 11, when occupation authorities barred the family of Ibrahim Hassan Shalabi—a young Jerusalemite killed in a traffic accident—from holding his funeral prayer inside Al-Aqsa Mosque. Authorities conditioned the proceedings on holding the prayer elsewhere, forcing the family to relocate it to the Shuman Mosque in Beit Hanina, while still permitting his burial at the Bab al-Rahma cemetery adjacent to the mosque's eastern wall. This represents a perilous precedent that will yield severe repercussions if allowed to pass unchallenged as the occupation intends.

This incident may seem like a minor footnote against the backdrop of thousands of intruders and sensational headlines of ritual incursions, yet it is no less dangerous. The blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque—spanning its entire 144-dunam compound, encompassing the Qibli Mosque, the Dome of the Rock, and all its courtyards—has historically served as the social and spiritual epicenter of Palestinian life in Jerusalem: a sanctuary where they pray, learn, and bid farewell to their deceased. By stripping the mosque of funerals, having already gutted it of study circles (halaqat) and its steadfast defenders (Mourabiteen), the occupation seeks to reduce Al-Aqsa to a sterile venue for detached devotional rituals—permitted strictly on its own terms and at times of its choosing.

Equally telling, Israeli occupation police ordered several worshippers following the dawn (Fajr) prayer during the holiday season not to return before 3:30 PM. Furthermore, those permitted entry were strictly confined to seated areas inside the roofed prayer halls, while the sprawling open-air courtyards were left entirely cleared for settler incursions.

The endgame pursued by the occupation state is unmistakable: an Al-Aqsa where Muslims are granted entry solely for prayers during designated hours, while settlers are ushered in at other times to perform their full suite of rituals—transforming it into a de facto shared holy site until total control can be seized, mirroring the blueprint deployed at Hebron's Ibrahimi Mosque, with all its well-known consequences.