Bab Hutta, a neighbourhood in Jerusalem’s Old City, lies right outside the gates to the most contested religious site in the world – the Temple Mount, or al-Haram al-Sharif.
Normally, the area is one of the most beautiful places in the city for Ramadan celebrations, covered in strings of festive lights and lanterns that take about 30 volunteers several weeks to set up. This year, there are no decorations, and the narrow passageways of the Muslim Quarter are quiet. About half of the usually lively souvenir shops and restaurants are closed; on some streets, there are more Israeli border police officers than civilians.
The holy month of fasting and feasting is expected to begin on 10 March, but with war in Gaza raging, and tensions in annexed East Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank at boiling point, there is little for Palestinians to celebrate.
“It is difficult to fast or eat when we think about our people in Gaza, who are starving,” said Bab Hutta resident Zeki al-Basti, 54. “There were no Christmas celebrations, and there will be no Easter celebrations, as long as the war continues … All we can do is pray.”
More than 30,000 people have been killed in Israel’s offensive on the Gaza Strip and 85% of the 2.3 million population displaced from their homes in the worst violence in the entire Israeli-Palestinian conflict to date, according to local health ministry and UN data. The war broke out after Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel, in which about 1,200 people were killed and another 250 taken hostage, according to Israeli figures.
Five months on, with a quarter of Gaza facing starvation, a comprehensive ceasefire in which sufficient aid can reach all areas of the besieged territory is more vital than ever. The longer the war lasts, the greater the risk of conflagration: Iran-backed groups in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen have already been drawn into the conflict.
Despite frequent claims from several quarters that a truce deal is imminent, however, both Israel and Hamas appear to still be far from agreeing terms. With just a week to go, an unofficial deadline of the start of Ramadan – during which violence often surges in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – is slipping away.
Israel has insisted it will press ahead with a threatened ground offensive on Rafah, the last place of relative safety in Gaza, during Ramadan if no deal is agreed to release Israeli hostages, a move that the international community has warned will lead to a humanitarian catastrophe and could serve as a trigger for escalating violence across the region.
Every year without fail, Ramadan puts Israeli control of the Temple Mount or al-Haram al-Sharif under the spotlight, as hundreds of thousands of Muslim worshippers try to access the compound for special prayers only performed during the fasting month.
The site is administered by Jordan, and under a longstanding compromise Jewish people are allowed to visit but not pray there. Any perceived attempt to alter the status quo acts as a lightning rod for violence; clashes between worshippers and border police in Ramadan 2021 helped ignite the last round of fighting in Gaza. Police raids in 2022 and 2023 on the compound’s al-Aqsa mosque were cited by Hamas as a major reason for the 7 October attack.
Israel, which has ultimate control over access to the compound and often restricts it, citing security concerns, has only allowed Muslim men over the age of 60 to enter the Temple Mount since the war began.
The far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, caused uproar last month when he recommended to the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, that even Israel’s Muslim minority of about 18% be banned from the compound this Ramadan.
He was later overruled by Israel’s internal security service, the Shin Bet, but not before Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political chief in exile in Qatar, called on Palestinians in Jerusalem and the West Bank to march to al-Aqsa on the first day of Ramadan.
“Hamas’s overarching goal at this moment is to cause the Temple Mount to catch fire,” Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, told reporters last week.
The government is deploying more security forces in Jerusalem and the West Bank to manage the threat, he added.
Last year was already the bloodiest in the West Bank since the second intifada of the 2000s, even before the latest conflict erupted. At least 400 Palestinians in the occupied territory have since been killed in confrontations with Israeli settlers or during clashes with soldiers, and army operations targeting cells belonging to Hamas and other militant groups are at a 20-year-high.
On Monday, Israeli forces launched the biggest raid in years on the Am’ari refugee camp in the Palestinian administrative capital of Ramallah, killing a 16-year-old, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa.
Raids also took place in Jenin and Tulkarem, and the Palestinian Prisoners Club said that at least 55 people had been arrested in the last 24 hours.
Israeli operations in the northern West Bank cities of Jenin and Nablus have become commonplace over the last two years, as well as, latterly, the western town of Tulkarem. Raids on Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, are still relatively rare, however, and Monday’s operation was widely viewed as a worrying sign that the violence may be spreading.
“Even in other wars and the intifada, or in the pandemic, it was never this bad,” said Ala, 32, who owns a grocery shop close to a checkpoint used for accessing the Western Wall.
“The pain and hunger that the families in Gaza are suffering is unbearable and we are afraid there is worse to come.”
