Hussein told Arab News that only around 40,000 worshipers succeeded in entering Jerusalem for the prayer. The Israeli police in Jerusalem confirmed the number. It added that thousands of police and border patrol officers were stationed near Al-Aqsa Mosque, Old City and East Jerusalem, in order to prevent disturbances.
Police said they allowed Palestinian married men aged 50 and over and women aged 45 and over to enter Jerusalem.
Arabs inside Israel and those living in East Jerusalem do not face restrictions in visiting the mosque compound, the place where the Palestinian uprising began in 2000. But since then, Palestinians from the West Bank have had an increasingly difficult time entering Jerusalem. With occasional exceptions, Palestinians from the Gaza Strip cannot get permission to visit the city.
In a separate development, Israeli forces on Friday demolished five stores in the West Bank village of Izbet Al-Tabib, to the east of Qalqilyah.
Bayan Al-Tabib, the head of the village's council, said that Israeli bulldozers razed the stores under the pretext that the houses were built without license from the Israeli Civil Administration, a military department responsible for the coordination of civil affairs in the West Bank.
