The Palestinian Authority (PA) never wastes an opportunity to foment incitement against Israel. Since the US and Israel launched a military campaign against the Iranian regime on February 28, 2026, Israel initiated a nationwide state of emergency prohibiting mass gatherings at all major religious places of worship, including the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Western Wall, and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, citing the risk of retaliatory missile strikes in densely populated areas.
This emergency closure provided the PA with a convenient excuse to formally denounce the suspension of access to the site, claiming it prevented Muslims from fulfilling religious obligations during Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr for the first time since 1967.
The Palestinian News & Information Agency (WAFA) accused the “Temple extremist Israeli groups" of initiating a campaign to perform animal sacrifices at Al-Aqsa during Passover by using AI-generated images and videos on their websites to marshal their supporters. What WAFA failed to report is that Israeli police have unfailingly apprehended and taken into custody anyone attempting to bring animals into the vicinity in order to preclude any conflict.
“Al-Aqsa is in Danger"
Not content with repudiating Israel for allegedly violating their religious rights, the PA proceeded to portray Israeli actions as a strategic pretense for territorial gain, positioning the 'Defense of Al-Aqsa' as a rallying cry for regional solidarity and resistance.
The Palestinian Media Watch reports that Chairman Mahmoud Abbas' Advisor of Religious Affairs and Islamic Relations, Mahmoud al-Habbash, sounded the ominous warning:
“I fear that Israel will exploit this situation to impose a new reality and a new way of dealing with the Al-Aqsa Mosque that will lead to strengthening the Israeli control over the mosque, and as a result of this it will realize the well-known Israeli plot to seize part of the mosque and turn it into a Jewish synagogue, and also it will carry out the satanic plot that strives to destroy the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque and build the alleged Israeli Temple in its place."
Defending Al-Aqsa thus becomes a "religious obligation" for "every Muslim."
The Transformation of Jerusalem
The transformation of Jerusalem into a Muslim holy city was a deliberate historical process rather than an immediate religious shift. As historian Moshe Gil notes, this evolution began under Caliph Abd al-Malik with the completion of the Dome of the Rock in 692, followed by the decade-long construction of the Al-Aqsa Mosque between 706 and 717.
Originally designed to attract thousands of Muslims en route to Mecca, these sites conferred a new spiritual quality to the city, eventually evolving the hadith traditions-such as the accounts of the angel Gabriel and Muhammad’s night journey-that anchored Jerusalem in Islamic theology.
Weaponizing Sacred Sites For Incitement
While these medieval foundations established Jerusalem’s religious character, they were strategically repurposed in the 1920s by Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the founder of Palestinian Arab nationalism, and a virulent antisemite.
Al-Husseini recognized that the spiritual weight of these sites could be weaponized into a calculated provocation for political gain. By manufacturing claims of Jewish plots against the mosque, he transformed a sacred site into a tool for mobilizing the masses. This weaponized pretext served as the primary catalyst for the 1929 Hebron and Safed massacres, establishing a century-long pattern where religious anxiety is exploited to trigger regional bloodshed and undermine Israel’s legitimacy in its ancestral homeland.
In an informal meeting in 1929, Sir John Chancellor, the High Commissioner of the British Mandate of Palestine, and Colonel Frederick Kisch, then-Chairman of the Zionist Executive in Jerusalem, stressed the urgent need for government action to stop the spread of false rumors that Jews were attacking mosques in the Temple Mount area-a belief fueling widespread Arab unrest. Rather than dwelling on past inaction, Kisch demanded immediate measures to restore public safety.
Chancellor noted that he had already coordinated with the Arab Executive Committee, securing a commitment from its leader, Musa Kazim Pasha al-Husseini, to issue a strong public statement debunking the rumors. At Kisch’s suggestion, Chancellor also agreed to instruct every District Office nationwide to take similar corrective action.
This Century-old Rallying Cry
This century-old rallying cry has since become the ideological lifeblood for regional hostility, systematically revitalized during every major flashpoint.
-The narrative was the driving force behind the 1996 Western Wall Tunnel riots and served as the ideological justification for the 2000 Second Intifada.
-It was further institutionalized through two decades of "Al-Aqsa in Danger" festivals, fueling the escalations of 2021 and 2022, and eventually providing the nominal justification for the 2023 "Al-Aqsa Flood" atrocities.
In the modern-day deployment of 2026, the script remains unchanged. Despite Israeli authorities actively apprehending fringe groups to prevent ritual provocations, the security closure is being framed as a "structural transformation" of the Status Quo. By leveraging these medieval foundations to transform routine security into an existential threat, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas continue to prioritize the dismantling of the Jewish State over the possibility of peace.
As history confirms, the mosque remains standing, but the canard of its destruction remains the most potent weapon in the regional playbook.
Dr. Alex Grobman is the senior resident scholar at the John C. Danforth Society, a member of the Council of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, and on the advisory board of the National Christian Leadership Conference of Israel (NCLCI). He holds an MA and PhD in contemporary Jewish history from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.