RAMALLAH, Palestine/ISTANBUL

Thousands of Palestinians on Thursday marked the birthday of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad inside the Ibrahimi Mosque in the West Bank city of Hebron, amid tight Israeli measures.

During a celebration organized by the Palestinian Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs, the mosque’s minarets rang out with chants and hymns for the occasion, which Muslims commemorate annually on the 12th of Rabi al-Awwal, the third month of the Islamic calendar.

Mosque director Mutaz Abu Sneineh told Anadolu that the Ibrahimi Mosque “was fully opened to worshippers celebrating the Prophet’s birthday.”

He noted, however, that Israeli authorities intensified security measures around the mosque and refused to hand it over entirely to Palestinian authorities last night, as is customary every year on the occasion.

“This mosque is an exclusive Islamic endowment, and we will never abandon our presence here,” he stressed.​​​​​​​

The Ibrahimi Mosque is located in the old city of Hebron in the southern West Bank, which is under Israeli control. About 400 illegal settlers live there, guarded by around 1,500 Israeli soldiers.

Revered by both Muslims and Jews, the mosque complex is believed to be the burial site of the prophets Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

After the 1994 massacre of 29 Palestinian worshippers inside the mosque by a Jewish extremist settler, Baruch Goldstein, the Israeli authorities divided the mosque complex between Muslim and Jewish worshippers.

In 2017, the UNESCO-affiliated World Heritage Committee declared the Ibrahimi Mosque a Palestinian World Heritage Site.