In a statement released on Monday, Saudi Arabia denounced the recent storming by Israeli extremists of the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque in the occupied city of al-Quds.

According to the Saudi Foreign Ministry, "Israel" is responsible for committing actions that constituted "a provocation to the feelings of Muslims around the world."

The statement was specifically referring to yesterday's storming when dozens of Israeli extremists entered the courtyards of the Al-Aqsa Mosque while under the protection of the IOF. 

Footage filmed by activists in the mosque documented the incursion of the settlers into the holy Muslim site, which was led by former Member of the Israeli Knesset, Yehuda Glick.

Israeli occupation troops brutally assault Palestinian worshipers for trying to enter Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque, while allowing hundreds of settlers to defile the holly site. pic.twitter.com/y9khz1d6lt

— PALESTINE ONLINE 🇵🇸 (@OnlinePalEng) September 17, 2023

"The Ministry of Foreign Affairs holds the Israeli occupation forces fully responsible for the repercussions of these continued violations," the Saudi statement read, while also urging the global community to fulfill its obligations in preventing any escalation of the Israeli presence in the occupied Palestinian territories.

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During the incursion, the IOF limited the entrance of Palestinian citizens to the holy site, hindering Muslim worshipers' access.

They also carried out a violent attack on Muslim worshipers near one of the primary entrances to the Al-Aqsa Mosque complex.

According to reports from local sources, as cited by the WAFA news agency, IOF soldiers assaulted three worshipers, including an elderly man and woman, in the vicinity of Bab as-Silsila (the Chain Gate) on Sunday morning.
 

#Statement | The Foreign Ministry expresses the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s condemnation and denunciation of the storming of the Al-Aqsa Mosque by a group of extremists under the protection of the Israeli occupation forces. pic.twitter.com/PYprOJDVrF

— Foreign Ministry 🇸🇦 (@KSAmofaEN) September 17, 2023

The news comes a day after reports emerged that Saudi Arabia informed the Biden administration that it will halt normalization talks with "Israel", according to the Saudi Elaph news website, which quoted an unnamed Israeli official.

The official who works at the Israeli Prime Minister's office said that the possibility of an agreement has been nullified as far-right figures, such as Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, in Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition government, who are against any sort of rapprochement with the Palestinians, and thus with the Saudis.

"Saudi Arabia has intelligently brought the Palestinians into the talks to control the form of the agreement with the Israelis, its timing, and the demarcation of their (Palestinian Authority's) independent state's borders without external interference and without Israeli imposition, as they tried to do in the Abraham Accords [normalization agreements], which failed to reach any agreement with the Palestinians," the Saudi news website reported.

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